


And you as well must die, beloved dust

by Blanquette



Series: The Yew Tree [1]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Death, Death Rituals, Domestic, Dreams, Dreamsharing, Eventual Happy Ending, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Forgiveness, M/M, Magical Realism, Plants, Resurrection, Rituals, Roommates, Some Humor, Tarot, Temporary Character Death, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:28:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 26,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23204704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blanquette/pseuds/Blanquette
Summary: Jeonghan's dreams were never really dreams.Joshua is neither dead nor alive and would really like someone to help.Minghao just wants to be left alone, and no he doesn't feel bad for selling useless crap to gullible wannabe witches, thanks for asking.or, Joshua's easy step-by-step guide to resurrection:step 1: piss off a whole covenstep 2: ???step 3: jesus your way out of limbo through the power of love
Relationships: Hong Jisoo | Joshua/Yoon Jeonghan
Series: The Yew Tree [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1754734
Comments: 32
Kudos: 133





	1. The Hanged Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't written anything in months, so this is sort of like my return to fanfiction after a big huge slump. Thank you quarantine I guess. Anyway I've been really into death stuff lately and this is directly the by-product of that healthy new passion. Enjoy!

**1.**

The dreams are always the same. Jeonghan opens his eyes and he’s sitting on dry earth, staring at a dark mountain range on the horizon he knows he’ll never reach even if he tried. It’s neither warm nor cold, neither light nor dark, no clouds in the purple sky hanging low overhead. There’s nothing there, no wind against his skin, no smell in the air; just a vast emptiness and the thing beside him. Jeonghan never looks at it directly, somehow he knows he is not allowed to. But it’s there all the same, and from the corner of his eyes he can make out its shape, the color of the cloth it wear, the movements of its broken body. He can hear the rattle of its naked bones and the scrape of its feet against the earth as it shifts, restless, always restless.

They stay side by side in silence, Jeonghan staring ahead at the mountain range, the thing moving next to him and sometimes it touches him, something cold and dead reaching out for the warmth of his skin. Jeonghan isn’t scared, yet he still doesn’t look at the calcified fingers circling his wrist, doesn’t answer the low rattle of a breath on naked ribs. Time is both long and short, running ahead while standing still and Jeonghan stares and stares at the mountains, almost black under the inky sky. The thing next to him always settles after a while, grows less agitated, and it’s then that Jeonghan hears its voice, jumbled words spilling in his head from a thousand mouths and he can never understand. Yet Jeonghan sits, and listens to the voices of the dead.

The dreams are always the same. Neither warm nor cold, neither light nor dark. Jeonghan sits and Jeonghan listens and Jeonghan never looks, until he does.

**2.**

“That’s the lovers, right? It’s good, isn’t it?”

Jeonghan smiles, righting the last card of the spread in front of him. The young man on the other side of the counter stares with bright eyes, excitement in his voice.

“Indeed, it’s the lovers.”

“That’s a good sign then, yeah?”

Jeonghan hesitates, cocking his head as he stares at the kid, stares at his high school blazer, at his untidy hair and the hope in his gaze. He sighs then, shifting on his feet.

“It can be. It symbolizes harmony, perfection within a relationship.”

“Neat. I should ask her out, then.”

Jeonghan smiles, nodding once as the kid claps his hands, bowing in a thankful gesture.

“Thanks. I mean, I’m pretty sure she likes me but, you know. How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing, it’s fine,” Jeonghan waves him off, a good-natured smile on his face as he brushes back the hair falling in his eyes.

“Really? Damn, thanks.”

“Don’t mention it, I’m not about to take money from a kid.”

This gets him a laugh, a weak protest about being almost a grown-up and the kid is soon on his way, bowing again as he goes through the door, the bell chiming when it closes. Jeonghan sighs then, tidying the cards scattered on the counter into a proper deck. They feel warm in his hands, always have, with their bent corners and faded colors, an old deck he found abandoned on a shelf in Minghao’s little shop. He looks down and the hanged man stares back at him from his place on the tree, the halo behind his head burning itself on Jeonghan’s retina.

“Self-sacrifice”, Jeonghan murmurs as the curtains hanging behind him part and Minghao steps out, leaning his back against the counter, looking at Jeonghan from above his glasses.

“The card was reversed. You lied.”

“Stop spying on me.”

“This is my shop. I’m a god here, I do whatever I want.”

Jeonghan sighs, putting his tarot deck back into its small wooden box. He closes the lid, fingers stilling over it.

“It wouldn’t have done any good to tell him the truth.”

“So false hopes are better?”

“At least he’ll be happy for a little while.”

“If he comes back here to cry I’m not dealing with it.”

Jeonghan laughs, shoving Minghao’s shoulder as he moves to put the box back on its shelf, amongst the worthless trinkets they put there for aesthetics’ sake. Two third the stuff Minghao sells is useless. The rest is hidden behind the red curtains no one can cross but them.

“He won’t. It’s fine. Nothing bad is gonna happen.”

“If you say so. I’ll bow to your superior gift of foresight.”

“Fuck off, Minghao.”

“No swearing in my shop” Minghao says as he raises a finger like a stern parent. Jeonghan rolls his eyes, moving back to the counter where he slouches, sparing a glance at the clock hanging next to the door.

“Are we expecting any more customers?”

Minghao shakes his head, stifling a yawn.

“Nope, you can close for tonight. I’ll be in my office where I trust you won’t need me.”

Minghao disappears back behind the curtains before Jeonghan can flip him off and he’s left alone to stare at the disarray that is the shop, a deep sigh caught between his ribs. He moves slowly then, going to the door first to lock up, turning the main lights off. In the dim light he walks amongst the shelves, fingers coursing over the myriad of meaningless objects, a pretty clutter of wood and glass, dried herbs and glistening stones. He circles back to the counter, standing still in the stuffy air, something weighting upon his chest and his eyes stray to the wooden box he put back just a moment ago, high on the shelf and there’s something magnetic attracting him there. He almost feels the smooth surface of the cards under his fingers, their strange warmth, like something alive, something with a will of its own.

Jeonghan reaches out then, takes down the box and the cards within, shuffling them until he knows it is enough. He puts the deck face down on the counter, cuts it, turns one half upside down and shuffles again and it takes longer this time, until it feels right. He sets the deck down neatly, wiping his hands on his pants before drawing the first card. A familiar one stares back at him and Jeonghan traces the young man’s face, the three cups in front of him and the one extended by a hovering hand. _You again,_ he smiles, _I’m not that apathetic_. And yet he knows the card is right, and he knows the face of the young man sitting alone atop the mountain. It’s his, and he puts the card down neatly, leaving it in the past where it belongs, moving to the present.

The king of wands, this time, upright and warm under his hand. Jeonghan frowns; he’s not a leader, not one to charge ahead, to look beyond what is at what could be. He sets the card down hesitantly, a little off kilter, wondering. Something feels off, it does, and when he moves to the future he takes a breath before turning the card over. The hanged man again, ankle tied to the tree, his halo blinding. Jeonghan sets it down carefully and looks at the series, past present and future, their meaning never so obscure. He could do it again, he thinks, but he knows this is what the cards meant to say, that they’re never wrong, their strange pulse too real under his fingers.

Slowly Jeonghan shuffles the cards back together, slowly he puts them back into their box, the box up high on the shelf. And he stays still, listening to his own heartbeat, to his own quiet breaths there in the soft darkness of a well-known place. He thinks back on the king upon his throne, his regal profile, his crown of fire and the blossoming wand in his hand. It feels like something escapes him there, a deeper meaning to unearth and he almost wants to look back at the card, to feel it under his fingers, trace its edges and maybe something will be revealed there, yet Jeonghan remains where he is, quiet and still.

**3.**

The room Minghao lets Jeonghan use is tucked all the way to the third floor of their low building, at the end of a short corridor bordered by half-empty storage rooms. Jeonghan steps are quiet on the concrete floor, and he can hear the rain outside, battering against the window at the far end. The corridor is cold and humid, but when he unlocks his door warmth engulfs him, warmth and the lingering smell of the incense he let burn there in the morning.

He takes off his shoes, tucking them neatly near the entrance, stepping on the rug he threw over the old wooden floor. A small desk, a bed and a reading chair, books strewn about the room on rickety shelves or piled onto the floor. Jeonghan likes the smallness of the room, likes the cramped space and the clutter; there’s no place to hide, just a small and secure space he made his own.

He goes first to the small altar in the corner, removing the burnt sticks of incense and fixing into their ashes the new ones he’ll light in the morning. He bows once, moving then to the bathroom attached to the room. It’s always the same; he steps out of his clothes, neatly folding them before changing into an old worn shirt and threadbare pants. He washes his face, his teeth, brushes his shoulder-length hair and stares at himself in the mirror, counting the lines of his face and he thinks of the young man sitting alone atop the mountain, oblivious to the hand extended to him and he wonders, again, _what am I missing? There is nothing out there._ But the cards are stubborn, and the man on the mountain will follow him until he understands.

Jeonghan retreats from the mirror, shaking his head, brushing back strands of dark hair. He moves back to the room, picking up the book he left turned over on the armrest of his chair and sometimes it’s easier to get lost in someone else’s words when you cannot find your own. He sinks in the armchair, legs folded, curled up on himself and it’s quiet, the pitter-patter of the rain knocking against his window, soft evening light spilling through the glass, barely enough for him to see the black words on the white page but he feels too lazy, too cozy to get up and turn on the lights. He follows the lines with his finger, the pages soft and smooth under his touch; mouths the words as if he read them to someone else, someone half-asleep. 

_Rather than tip a table for you, let me tell you what Ralle The Sioux Control once told me. He said the dead had souls, but when I asked him how that could be – I thought the dead were souls, he broke my trance. Don’t that make you suspicious that there’s something the dead are keeping back? Yes, there’s something the dead are keeping back._

When Jeonghan lifts his eyes from the page, the walls of his room have faded away and he’s staring at a landscape he knows well – tall, dark mountains in the distance, a purple sky hanging over dried earth. His hands are empty, folded in his lap and he can hear the thing beside him, rattling and shaking. It’s longer to settle, this time, or maybe it isn’t – when Jeonghan understands where he is it feels like he has already been there for half an eternity. There’s a tentative touch against his side, gone as soon as it came, another on his knee; the thing moves, earth scraping, and something grabs Jeonghan’s wrist, tugging slightly.

Jeonghan knows he isn’t allowed to look, and yet, this time, he does. He looks down at the hand on his wrist, stares longer than he should at the decaying flesh greying over bones, knuckles bursting through the sagging skin and something’s moving underneath it, the black elytra of a carrion beetle appearing between shreds of rotting flesh. And then, it’s something else that Jeonghan sees. Golden skin, long fingers wrapping easily around his wrist, soft and delicate, a silver ring catching the light. Jeonghan stares, something like grief unfolding in his chest.

“What do you want?” he asks, voice subdued, swallowed by the heavy silence resting on this dried earth. There’s an intake of breath, a shift next to him and Jeonghan doesn’t dare to look, gaze riveted to the hand on his skin, dead and alive and dead and alive and – there’s a thousand voices screaming in his head, an anguish like no other drowning him, pounding him into the earth and the hand won’t let go, tugging almost painfully, the voices won’t quiet and Jeonghan cannot breath anymore, the sky falling down on him and – and there’s a voice he knows amongst the screams, a voice he can clung to until – until Jeonghan opens his eyes to Minghao’s worried face.

“Holy shit, what happened?”

Minghao is too close, Jeonghan sitting up in his armchair, the discarded book tumbling to the floor. He feels sweat on his skin, his hair plastered to his forehead and something heavy sits in his chest, something too much like fear.

“Are you alright? Say something.”

“Yeah, I. I’m fine, it was just a dream.”

“It didn’t feel like just a dream to me. I felt it from downstairs. What the hell happened, Jeonghan?”

Jeonghan stares at Minghao, at the too-piercing eyes he hides behind round glasses, at the shock of dark hair falling over his brow and he trusts him, he does.

“It’s sort of a long story.”

“I got time. Go wash your face and meet me downstairs.”

Jeonghan nods, Minghao pulling him to his feet and he stumbles to the bathroom, splashing cold water onto his face until he feels fully himself. He stares in the mirror but nothing’s changed, it’s still him, hair damp and skin rosy from rubbing at it. He looks down at his wrist, half-expecting bruises in the shape of fingertips but there’s nothing, skin unmarred yet he can still feel it, feel the touch of the thing in the dream, the living corpse waiting for him, always, under the purple sky.

**4.**

Jeonghan finds Minghao in the kitchen, pouring boiling water in a teapot. He doesn’t look up when Jeonghan enters, gesturing for him to take a seat as he retrieves two mugs from the cupboard. The kitchen smells of herbs and something sweet Jeonghan doesn’t recognize. It’s still raining, a constant platter against the closed windows and Jeonghan lets the noise soothe him, resting his head on his hands once seated, waiting for Minghao to finish.

A steaming mug is placed before him as Minghao takes a seat.

“It’s burdock.”

“Warding?”

“And cleansing. That shit felt nasty.”

Jeonghan laughs, wondering what it is that Minghao really felt, which thread of his dream came to find him.

“So, dreams?”

“Yeah. I’ve been having them for a while now. It’s always the same and usually nothing happens, I just sit there, but this time I… I looked.”

“At what?”

Jeonghan hesitates, not sure how to word the presence in his dreams, how to bring it out for Minghao to see.

“There’s something, or someone, with me in the dream. Something dead, I think, or at least not living. We sit together and it touches me sometimes, and somehow I know I’m not supposed to look. But this time I did, I looked at its hand and it was both dead and alive. And then, I asked what it wanted, and everything turned to chaos. That’s when you woke me up.”

Minghao sips at his tea, staring above the frame of his glasses. He’s thinking, Jeonghan can tell, a worried crease between his eyebrows.

“What does the place look like?”

“Like a desert of dried earth. There’s nothing, just some mountains in the distance, and the sky looks purple, like how it is sometimes before a storm. I can’t tell if it’s night or day.”

“And the thing sits next to you.”

“Yeah. I think it wants something. It’s trying to tell me but I can’t understand.”

“Are you scared, in the dream?”

A new hesitation, Jeonghan thinking back to the thing next to him, to the rattling noises, the white shroud he can see from the corner of his eyes.

“No. I don’t really feel anything. Or, well, this time I did. But it was just… I was sad.”

“Sad?”

“Yeah. It didn’t feel like it was mine, though, the sadness. I think it was theirs. Their grief.”

Minghao sighs, putting down his mug. Jeonghan waits him out, sipping at his own tea and it tastes sweet, warms his bones as he swallows, spreads like ink between his ribs, down to his stomach. Minghao speaks then, slowly, trying to put into words something he barely understands himself.

“I felt something. Something very old and very dark, something hidden, something that should remain hidden, I think.”

“Was it evil?”

Minghao shakes his head, sitting back into his chair.

“No, it wasn’t. It just was. But it felt… Dead and nasty. It felt like suffering. I don’t know, it was weird. It never happened like this before. How long have you been having these dreams, you said?”

Jeonghan shrugs, fingers playing on the mug’s handle.

“I don’t know, really. Months.”

“Can you figure out something that could have released them?”

“Not really.”

“Mh. Don’t speak to dead things in dreams. Not until I figure out more about this, yeah? Sometimes for people like you, dreams aren’t really dreams.”

“You think something really is trying to communicate with me.”

“Yeah. And until I know what this something is, I’d rather you not let it in.”

Jeonghan cocks his head, considering.

“Am I in danger?”

“I don’t think so. Not yet. It didn’t feel like it wanted to harm you, right? But there might be something else, there, too. Something that doesn’t want you to look.”

“This really appeals to my rebellious spirit.”

Minghao laughs, shaking his head at Jeonghan.

“Don’t be an idiot. Drink your tea before it gets cold.”

**5.**

When the afternoon slowly drags to an end, Jeonghan finds himself at the back of the store, polishing some overpriced crystal balls Minghao will no doubt one day manage to convince someone are actually magic for real, no joke. Probably one of the bright-eyed kids who keep coming to buy sage. He moves to the next shelves, rearranging books in order of height, moving a stray bauble to its proper place. Mindless tasks he likes to perform, soothing in their simplicity, their repetitiveness. Jeonghan moves around the store, fingers fleeting over shelves and the clutter resting there, warmth unfurling in his chest; there’s something homey in the familiarity of the place, a feeling he had long searched for. The little room at the top of the stairs, the cluttered store full of useless trinkets, Minghao’s stuffy office and Minghao himself, glasses and smart mouth and all.

When he reaches the heavy curtains behind the counter, separating the store from the rest of the building, Jeonghan pauses with a finger on the light switch, gaze traveling one last time over the store, closed for the night. There’s a nagging thought at the back of his mind, then, something he had buried under menial tasks and the tedium of everyday life. Soft hands that must have been warm once, a silver ring catching the light, long fingers tugging at his wrist. Jeonghan bites his lips, Minghao’s warning in his ears; _don’t speak to dead things in dreams_. But he had said nothing about the waking hours, and Jeonghan takes the three steps separating him from the shelf behind the counter, grabbing the inlaid wooden box on the highest one before turning the lights off and scampering upstairs.

He moves the clutter on his desk to his bed, sitting straight in his old chair. When he takes the deck from the box it feels heavier than it used to, warmer, too. Jeonghan hesitates, something off, and he remembers the king of wands upon his throne; it’s the same feeling, the power in the cards somehow escaping him. But he has a question to ask and he starts shuffling the deck; it’s quick, this time, as if the cards didn’t want to wait. Split the deck, turn one half upside down, shuffle again. Quick and quicker gestures and Jeonghan feels the cards pulsing under his fingers, eager like they never were.

 _Who are you_ , Jeonghan focuses on the words as he draws the first card and gently puts it down, staring at the figure on its surface. The hierophant, reversed. _Rebellion. Defiance_ , Jeonghan thinks, and he hesitates before drawing the second card, placing it neatly besides the first. Six of wands, reversed. _Shattered pride. Punishment._ Jeonghan bites his lips, staring at the cards, hand hovering over the deck to draw the last one. He stares at it, at the woman there, weeping in bed, nine swords hanging from the wall beside her. Jeonghan puts it down, carefully. The card is reversed. _Despair._ But hope, too, and most of all, _reaching out_.

Jeonghan sighs, leaning back in his chair, staring at the series. _Rebellion, punishment, despair._ A living corpse jailed in a desert of dried earth, alone under a purple sky. Carrion beetles crawling over his exposed flesh, golden skin and decayed bones, long fingers and cold touches, silver ring and a white shroud. _What did you do?_ Jeonghan thinks, _what did you do to deserve this?_ He shakes himself, shuffling the cards back together, stuffing them neatly into their wooden box and his fingers linger on the closed lid, feeling the power strumming underneath, familiar like a friend, like a lover.

He shoves the box aside, feeling suddenly drained, mind clouded with too much thoughts, too much confusion. Dipping forward he rests his head upon his arms and he hadn’t meant to fall asleep, he had not, yet when he opens his eyes, it’s on a familiar purple sky. Jeonghan looks down, at the dried earth he sits upon, and something changed, something did, white pebbles mixed in with the dust, pebbles he realizes are shards of bones when he takes them into his hands. He stares, looking up and the desert isn’t a desert anymore, a tall tree standing a few steps away from him, gnarled branches drawing towards the sky, painting shadows on the field of bones resting amongst its roots.

Jeonghan jolts, the shards falling from his hands and he realizes then that he is alone, the presence nowhere to be seen, to be heard. He stands, hesitantly drawing forward; bones grind underfoot, brittle and old, smashed into dust. The closer he gets to the tree, the more there is, a greyish moss growing in between them, swallowing the sound of Jeonghan’s steps. He walks until he’s standing under the overbearing shadow of the tree; an old yew, trunk twisting as if bodies were trapped inside it, pushing to escape. Jeonghan looks up at the sky peeking through the naked branches and everything is dead here, everything.

And then, he’s not alone anymore. There’s a familiar rattle, the sound of bones grinding against each other, a cold hand on his wrist. Jeonghan looks down at the fingers, at the naked bones where shreds of flesh hang, skin split open. Strangely he doesn’t feel any disgust, any fear, yet he doesn’t look at the thing when it tugs him forward, amongst the gnarled roots of the giant tree. It’s forbidden, he knows, and there’s so much he can get away with in such a place.

They stop amongst the roots, the thing letting go of his wrist yet Jeonghan can hear the clatter of its teeth, something urgent in the twitches of its body, and he looks down at the mound of bones at their feet. There’s a crown of flowers blooming there, small yellow petals Jeonghan knows as common rue, the herb of grace, and he hears Minghao’s voice in his ear _, those are for sorrow, regrets and repentance you know, do not try to woo anyone with them_. And it hits him, then, what the thing is showing him. This is a grave, and the grief he had felt in another time, another place comes back to him, unfurling in his chest, pushing against his ribs, tears he doesn’t know for whom he sheds spilling on his cheeks.

The thing touches him again and Jeonghan sinks to his knees, hands falling amongst the bones and he’s digging, as fast as he can, the mound toppling over, the earth below soft and malleable and Jeonghan keeps digging, breaking his nails on bone shards and soon he feels something under his hands, cloth, a white shrouds he clears off but doesn’t dare disturb. He unearths most of it, the thing fliting around him, dragging its broken body over the roots, peering at the grave from its blind eyes and soon Jeonghan has no choice left; he has to look.

Carefully, Jeonghan peels back the cloth as the thing stills behind him, and what he finds isn’t what he expected. Soft hair of a light, dusted color falling over a strong brow. Full lips slightly parted as if in slumber, long lashes drawing shadows on high cheekbones, and the man in the grave looks young, head slightly tilted, slender neck drawing a line to the dip of his collarbones. Jeonghan stares, peeling back more of the cloth until he uncovers his hands, clasped together, and there’s a silver ring there, catching the light. Jeonghan stills as the thing beside him topples, bends under an unfelt wind and the shaking of its body mirrors the racks of a sob.

“It’s you”, Jeonghan says, gaze trained on the dead man’s face. “This is you, you’re buried here.”

A hand on his wrist, dead and alive and dead and alive and if Jeonghan could move he would hold it but his body feels heavy like a stone, anchored to the earth by the deepest grief and he knows the sorrow he feels is not entirely his own.

“What did you do? What did you do to deserve this?”

The hand tightens around his wrist, a scraping sound coming from the corpse he still doesn’t dare to look at but Jeonghan knows how to listen, listen at the rising wind, at the whispers in the branches, hair whipping around his face and there’s shadows there, riding on its tail; voices in his head and the smell of rain, _hundreds of years under the earth_ , and Jeonghan feels the cold flesh against his own, closes his eyes and sees the sleeping face of the man in the grave, _a hundred years in the fire_ , and the grief in his chest, the bones under his feet, _a hundreds of years is long enough_ , the tree, the yew tree soaring to a purple sky that never knew the sun, _a_ _hundreds of years is long enough_ , _help me, help me._

And then, Jeonghan falls. Falls through the bones and the earth and the ancient darkness underneath, falls, down to his body slumped over a desk in a room immersed in shadows. He wakes with a jolt and there’s tears on his face, the feel of the dead man still lingering on his wrist. He stares at his unmarred skin, cold fingertips tracing someone else’s touch. The cards are still on the table, the woman still weeping, face buried in her hands and a wave of sorrow washes over him, something deep and ancient, something tasting of regret and loss that pushes thorns under his skin.

There’s hurried steps in the corridor, his door banging open and a warm embrace, Minghao smothering him against his chest.

“What the fuck was that? What did you do?”

“You felt it, too?”

“Where did you go?”

Jeonghan swallows, forces a deep breath through the vines in his lungs, fisting his hand in Minghao’s shirt.

“There was a tree, and a field of bones. Someone was buried there, amongst the roots. I need to help them, Hao, I do, I can’t just… Leave them there to suffer. You felt it, right? You felt it too.”

“I couldn’t fucking breath anymore.”

Minghao shifts, crouches at Jeonghan’s feet, eyes searching his face, hands framing his jaw.

“I need you to stop. I told you, do not talk to dead things. Not until I know more. The tree, it’s…”

“You know it?”

“We all see it, one day. I did. It’s old, very old, I think it was there at the start.”

“The start of what?”

“The start of everything, I guess,” Minghao shrugs, hands falling to Jeonghan’s wrists and his touch is warm, so different from the cold grip of the man under the tree.

“Do you know who could be buried there?”

There’s a shadow fleeting over Minghao’s face, a slight hesitation in the turn of his lips but he shakes his head, rising to his feet.

“No. I’m not sure. I’ll do some research. Until then, please no more cards reading and I know you can’t help with the dreams but like. Maybe don’t touch anything and don’t say anything while you’re in there?”

Jeonghan smiles, something that pulls at the dry skin of his cheeks.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Are you alright?”

There’s hesitance in Minghao’s voice, something worried in his dark eyes Jeonghan doesn’t really know how to handle.

“Yeah, I’m fine. It was just, you know. A lot.”

“Mh. Get some actual rest, yeah?”

Jeonghan nods, Minghao retreating, gently closing the door. It’s not long until Jeonghan can smell something familiar waft from the corridor, something like herbs and burning wood. The next day, he finds the remnants of devil’s claw roots in a censor, a protective bindrune carved at the bottom of his door.

**6.**

At first, Jeonghan does what he’s told. The cards are locked in a drawer of his desk, and the dreams grow less and less frequent. In them the sky hangs low over dry earth; he doesn’t see the tree anymore, doesn’t find bones under his fingers and when the thing seated at his side touches him, he doesn’t look. But the sadness is still there, something deep taking roots in the marrow of his bones, growing vines in his lungs and Jeonghan feels guilt clawing at him – he should do something, find something to make it stop.

Sometimes he thinks of the man sleeping under the tree, his delicate features and the deceptive peacefulness of his face. A part of him wants to see him again, see his eyes open and hear his voice, ask for answers to his questions. Why me, why now, who are you, what should I do. But there is nothing to be heard and in his dreams the thing is quiet, breath rattling and bones scraping on sand and Jeonghan wakes with a growing emptiness under his heart. He doesn’t ask Minghao anything, either. Jeonghan knows there’s something he’s hiding but he doesn’t want to pry, not this time. And so they dance around each other, worry growing in Minghao’s eyes as Jeonghan forces another smile to his lips. 

“We need to do something about the reserve,” Minghao says, slumping next to him on the counter, glasses pushed up on his forehead. Jeonghan glances at him, stifling a yawn.

“You mean the _reserve_ reserve?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought this was your problem and not mine.”

“It was. But I’m making it yours right now. Merry Christmas.”

“We’re in May, Minghao.”

“Time is an illusion.”

Jeonghan sighs, rubbing at his tired eyes, and there’s a ring of keys on the counter when he reopens them.

“Just do an inventory for starters, yeah?”

“I don’t know what half the stuff in there is.”

“Cause you think I do? Just write down a description.”

The reserve is tucked back there, behind the red curtains, down a small staircase. Everything with actual power Minghao collected over the years is kept inside, far away from the eyes and, most of all, grabby hands of their usual customers. Jeonghan grabs the keys, cold against his palm, and levels Minghao with a tired stare.

“Will you pay me more if I do this?”

“You’re getting paid?”

“Fuck off, Minghao.”

Minghao pushes off the counter, laughing, before sauntering upstairs, looking way too proud of himself. Jeonghan is left to stare at the keys, sighing as he moves behind the curtains, walking to the reserve at a sedate pace. He never liked it, the room small and stuffy, no windows to let in any daylight. He curses under his breath when he turns on the naked lightbulb dangling from the ceiling, a notepad under his arm. The tall shelves are covered in a clutter Minghao never even tried to keep in order and the dust floating in the air makes him sneeze.

Yet Jeonghan dutifully takes up his notepad, cataloguing every item he can be bothered to identify.

_1 Tarot deck. It’s pretty, can I have it?_

_1 stuffed animal that may have been a rabbit once. Are you sure it’s actually magic? What does it do? Stink up the place?_

_2 smoky crystal balls_

_1 scrying whatever. Bowl?_

_1 silver ring in need of polishing_

_2 creepy dolls I swear if they come back to haunt me I’ll beat your ass_

_3 sets of bone runes_

_A metric ton of dried herbs_

_Dust, not the fairy kind_

_At least like 37 bottles of stuff. Oils? I don’t know I don’t want to smell them_

_Dude this is useless we need some kind of method_

_And also someone who knows what they’re doing, unlike me_

_Also like how many stones do you need? There’s dozens do you have cool rock syndrome_

Jeonghan sighs, tucking his pen behind his ear and dipping his head back to work the cricks in his neck. He hasn’t been in here for twenty minutes and it feels like too much already, the oppressing atmosphere of the room weighting him down. Too tall shelves, too many things, and the sense of hidden powers pulling at his mind. _Fuck it,_ he thinks, marching back towards the door, and it’s when he has one foot on the stairs that he notices it. A low pulse, something familiar and warm, something he knows well.

He looks back down at his notepad, at his own looping script.

_1 Tarot deck._

_1 stuffed animal_

_2 smoky crystal balls_

_1 scrying whatever._

_1 silver ring in need of polishing_

_2 creepy dolls_

_3 sets of bone runes_

_A metric ton of dried herbs_

And his eyes catch on the words in the middle of the page. _1 silver ring._ Jeonghan swallows, glancing behind him at the room plunged in darkness. _1 silver ring in need of polishing._ He turns the lights back on, trying to remember where he saw it, there, in-between the awful dolls, in an old box without a lid. It feels warm under his hand and he turns it between his fingers, rubbing the tarnished silver with the hem of his shirt. And he knows, then. The feeling. It’s the same, when he touches his tarot cards.

The door bangs shut behind him and he’s running up the stairs; Minghao’s office door is closed but it doesn’t matter, Jeonghan knocks and enters without waiting for a response, the ring clutched in his palm. Minghao startles from the pile of papers scattered on his desk, watching him with wide eyes.

“What is it, what happened?”

“Minghao”, Jeonghan pauses to take his breath, swallowing around his agitation. “You know, the cards you gave me. Where did you find them?”

Minghao shrugs, putting down the pen he was holding.

“I’m not sure, they’ve been in the shop since forever. Why? Is there a problem with them?”

“No. No, there’s no problem.”

“Then what is it?”

Jeonghan takes a few steps inside the room, hesitating before putting the ring down on the dark wood of the desk. Minghao glances at it, a frown on his face.

“Do you know who this belongs too? I found it in the reserve.”

Minghao reaches out to take the ring, turning it over with careful gestures and something almost possessive rises in Jeonghan, hands curling at his side. _Don’t touch it,_ it says. _It’s not yours._ Minghao puts it back in the exact same place, carefully glancing at Jeonghan over the golden rim of his glasses.

“I might know.”

“You might, or you do?”

“Look, Jeonghan, this isn’t…”

“Just tell me.”

Minghao sighs through his nose, reclining back in his chair.

“It’s been in my family forever. It doesn’t really have any power, at least not any that I know of.”

“Where did it come from?”

“I’m not sure. Back when we were still a coven this was some sort of symbol. Or heirloom. It belonged to some ancestor or something. But… Look, there’s a story. You know, like a legend? About the founders of the coven.”

“How does it go?”

“Badly, like every legend.”

Jeonghan pulls to himself the stool standing near the bookshelf to sit down, resting his arms on the desk. Minghao’s always been full of stories, and Jeonghan knows well the faraway look overtaking him each time he starts to tell one, voice lowering. 

“There were two brothers, exact mirrors of each other. Both powerful, both bright, both beautiful like princes. But like two sides of a mirror they followed a reversed path. The eldest was well-loved, well-respected, and maybe there was not enough left for his little brother. Maybe it’s circumstances, maybe it’s the way he was treated – but the little brother never really fit in, and the two grew up as rivals. One following the bright path, one following the dark road. The little brother was feared, amongst the people of the coven, always challenging his brother’s authority, challenging their traditions, challenging the paved way. And once a leader, the brother couldn’t allow him to continue; he removed him, exiled him, and grew comforted and more powerful still. Yet it wasn’t enough. The little brother became resentful, maybe, or maybe there’s something else we do not know. But he came back, and the legend doesn’t tell who attacked whom first, but the little brother lost control, released the dark powers within him, and speared the sun. His big brother fell, and the coven, in their fear, banded together to bring him down, seal him away. It’s a lesson on what happens when the balance of power is upset, when the two sides can’t live in harmony, the dark and the light.”

Minghao pauses, gesturing to the silver ring at the edge of his desk.

“The arms on the ring, it’s the brothers’ coat.”

Jeonghan looks down, staring at the ring, knowing how it will feel under his fingers, knowing how it looks, too, on its owner’s hand.

“Minghao…”

The reversed hierophant. The king of wands. The man under the tree. 

“Yeah. If the legend is true, you seem to have found the dark one’s resting place.”

Jeonghan bites his lips, staring at Minghao’s face, silence stretching between them. He gazes down at the ring, not daring to touch it, the dull silver swallowing the light.

“What… What should we do?”

“Honestly? I have no idea. I don’t even know how he could reach you.”

“The cards.”

“What?”

“The cards feel the same as the ring. I think they must have been his, too.”

Minghao sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses over his forehead so he can rub at his eyes. He looks tired, Jeonghan realizes, tired and worried and maybe this is too big for the both of them. There used to be more, covens and families and whole communities banding together, but this too had disappeared with the relentless march of the world, and Minghao was alone, so utterly alone.

“Just… Don’t do anything for now, yeah? I need more time to figure shit out.”

Jeonghan nods carefully, reaching out to take back the ring and it weighs heavily at the center of his palm. Minghao follows the gesture with his eyes, putting his glasses back on his nose.

“Be careful, Jeonghan. Sometimes legends are realer than we’d like them to be.”

“Yeah, I know. Don’t worry.”

When Jeonghan leaves the office, gently closing the door behind him, Minghao’s story follows him up to his room, his story and the face of the man under the tree, peaceful in death, the one who may have killed his own brother, the one sealed away, punished and unforgiven. Jeonghan sits at his desk with a heavy weight bearing upon his chest, the smell of devil’s claw still lingering in the air. His fingers itch, and he knows what he wants to do, what he needs, but the cards are locked in a drawer and he promised he wouldn’t touch them anymore.

But when he closes his eyes Minghao’s tired, worried face is etched upon his eyelids and Jeonghan sighs, fishing the key out of his pocket; Minghao can’t be the only one to look for answers, the weight of the world upon his shoulders. The deck is warm under his touch when he gets it out, and Jeonghan stares at it before shuffling, knowing which hands held it before his, knowing their power isn’t entirely his. He cuts, shuffles again, and before drawing he puts the silver ring on his finger.

A knight upon his white horse, bearing a golden cup. A charming face, armor glistening against the blue sky and Jeonghan stares at his eyes, wondering, maybe, if _his_ would look the same. Jeonghan smiles, and he knows what the knight tells him – the heart beats in its cage and it should be followed, sometimes decisions do not need to be weighed. 

He turns over the next card, finding there a woman, tied-up and blindfolded, eight swords planted in the earth around her. Jeonghan touches the reversed card with the tip of his fingers, gently, and the doubts that plague him lift if only a little. The knight, the woman, they’re telling him the same thing, pointing to the way forward. He wets his lips, fingers going for the last card of his simple spread and he hesitates before turning it over, placing it neatly besides the upside-down woman, and his breath catches in his lungs.

The hanged man, again, hair the color of the sun, one foot tangled in the leaves of the tree bearing his weight. Jeonghan stares, something dark unfurling in his belly, catching between his ribs. He pushes back from the desk, tilting in his chair, hands gripping the edge of the wood; head tipped back he lets out a long exhale, hoping to alleviate the pressure in his chest but it’s not enough, there’s something dark coursing over his skin, a bad feeling, and he knows who the hanged man is. _So be it,_ he thinks, raising a hand to the ceiling and the ring is there on his finger, warm against his skin, the stained silver drinking in the light.

He tilts his chair back down, and when he looks up, Jeonghan stills. He’s not in his room anymore, the sky hanging low over distant mountains. _But I wasn’t asleep,_ he thinks. _I wasn’t asleep._

 _You are now_ , a voice answers, and Jeonghan jolts, looking down at the earth under his feet. From the corner of his eyes he can see white cloth shuffling next to him, dust and grim clinging to its rim. He exhales slowly, turning the ring around his finger in a nervous gesture. The dream isn’t still anymore, the sky a shade deeper, soft wind tangling in his hair; he can hear a thunderstorm rumbling faraway over the mountain range.

“Is this still a dream?”

_It never really was._

Jeonghan nods, eyes still riveted to the earth.

“I don’t know if I can help you. If I should.”

There’s a hand on his wrist, tugging slightly, and when Jeonghan looks the skin is soft and unmarred.

“We found out who you are. You killed your brother.”

_That’s not all that I am._

“You don’t deny it.”

_There is no point in denying the truth._

Jeonghan swallows, still gazing at the gentle fingers circling his wrist.

“I want to see you again.”

The hand tugs and Jeonghan follows, tripping over his own feet, gaze riveted to the white shroud dragging over the earth. He doesn’t look up until they stop, and even then he almost regrets it; the mound of bones is intact amongst the old roots of the yew tree, a fractured skull resting at its foot, staring back at him with empty sockets. The creature stays back when Jeonghan starts digging, until his fingers catch on soft cloth and he’s still there, of course he is, forever trapped under the bones of the dead.

Slowly, Jeonghan uncovers his face, brushes his hair back from his brow, discards more bones until he can see his hands, can see the ring on his finger, the exact same one he is wearing. Jeonghan sits as if he fell, suddenly unsteady, and he stares at the man in the grave, the creature shuffling next to him.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

_We hated each other._

“Did you?”

_He hated that I was free. That as a second son I could abscond of the rules and traditions he had to follow. I hated how loved he was. How proud, how absolutely perfect in every way. I needed something of my own, something he couldn’t touch and make better._

“The dark arts.”

There’s a rattle from the creature, something that could have been a laugh had he been of flesh and blood.

_That’s not how I called it. There’s old things, forgotten things, shadows that live amongst death and bones. They will come to you, if you know how to call upon them. But that’s not allowed. Dead things should stay dead, that’s what they say. It brought hatred and fear upon me._

Jeonghan shifts, eyes trained to the man’s face, wondering how he would have been like, alive. Proud, defiant, hurt. A slow fire burning.

“Why did you kill him?”

_It was a time of change. Magic was slipping out of the world, hunted and feared. There was no more room for things like us. The end of our sovereignty. We had lost too many. I had already been cast out, it was not my battle. But my brother, he thought this was a war he had to fight. It wasn’t. It was like a natural disaster. You can’t stand against the march of the world. He still tried. And I couldn’t let him._

Jeonghan thinks of Minghao, seated alone at his desk, thinks of the objects he desperately collects, hoarding them all in the small room at the bottom of the stairs. Relicts from times gone by, times where he wouldn’t have been so alone, one amongst the lasts of his kind.

“Why not?”

_He was courting his own destruction. The destruction of our coven. I think he knew. I think he knew, but did not care; it was the only way, the righteous way. And maybe he was right, maybe I should have let them seek a fiery death instead of a quiet disappearance. Still, I tried. I thought I knew better. But we hated each other._

A soft wind rises, voices threaded into the breeze, bringing the smell of rain and the low rumble of thunder in the distance. Jeonghan feels an inexplicable sadness unfurl below his heart, a soft longing, a hallway of regrets for what had been, yet knowing the result would have always been the same. An irreparable loss.

“The legend doesn’t say who attacked first.”

_Me, of course, who else? He was too proud, too set in his ways, I was still family and you don’t raise your hand against family. I wanted him to fight me. But I wasn’t worth his anger. There was years of resentment between us, of envy, of hatred. And so, I murdered him._

Jeonghan pauses, staring at the peaceful, beautiful face entombed in bones. The voice is too cold, the words too plain. It doesn’t speak of the hurt, the fear, the sadness Jeonghan can feel on the wind, can feel carved in his own flesh. 

“Was it what you wanted?”

_No. But I must have. It was my powers, my shadows. I heard his bones crack and I did nothing to stop it, when the blood gushed forth I stood still. He died and I was left standing._

“And they sealed you away.”

_Yes._

“How?”

_I let them._

Jeonghan sighs, looking at the yellow flowers still blooming upon the grave. Sorrow, regrets, repentance. _He wanted to be punished_ , he thinks, _but maybe now it is enough._ The voice speaks again, gently, cold as the decayed flesh it comes from.

_They came for me not long after. They were scared, and grieving. I fought them off once, twice, and then I let them. They took my blood and my flesh and buried it in this place, under roots old as the world. I became a shadow, too, something old and decayed. But nothing ever really dies, here._

Jeonghan reaches out into the grave, tracing high cheekbones, a sharp jawline with the tip of his finger and the flesh is cold under his touch.

“Hundreds of years under the earth is long enough.”

_It is, isn’t it?_

“The world has changed. Your kind has almost disappeared.”

_What about you? You walk in dreams._

Jeonghan shrugs, folding his hands back into his lap.

“I’m just a clairvoyant. A fortuneteller. I have no real magic, only the gift of foresight. The power you feel on me isn’t my own.”

_Whose, then?_

“Someone who doesn’t want me here. Someone young and yet very old. Someone who kept your silver ring and told me your story.”

_Family._

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

_You wanted to see me again._

“I did. I know you. I know how you feel, I know the warmth in the cards and I know it is yours. I’ve sat with you and I’ve watched beetles crawl on your skin, I’ve felt your hands upon my wrists and I’ve heard your voice in my head. When I don’t dream I miss it, when I close my eyes I see your face resting amongst the bones.”

There’s a shift in the air, the sky a shade darker, and the thunderstorm breaks over the mountains, the sound much closer than Jeonghan would like; he looks up, startled. The wind has risen and there’s shadows whirling amongst the branches of the old tree, shadows whose voices Jeonghan heard a thousand times, whispering obscure words, screaming in his head and he understands now, what they wanted, who they were.

“What is your name?”

_Joshua_

“How do I get you out?”

_I don’t know_

“Who does?”

_Family._

**7.**

It’s the second time in as many days that Jeonghan bursts in Minghao’s office, the latter staring owlishly at him from behind a book.

“Is this becoming a habit? What is it this time?”

Jeonghan smiles, slowing down his pace as he reaches the desk. The clutter upon it is worse than Jeonghan remembers, a pile of old books pushed back in a corner to make room for notebooks covered in scribbles, old journals, letters piled upon them and Minghao’s banged-up laptop, its fan whirring. It’s obvious he’s been researching, and Jeonghan gingerly sits down on his stool.

“I’ve had a breakthrough.”

Minghao’s eyes narrow behind his glasses and he links his fingers together, resting his hands upon the book opened before him.

“Really.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m listening.”

“Right.”

“Jeonghan.”

“Yeah?”

“Is this a stupid idea?”

Jeonghan raises a finger, opening his mouth to speak, but he catches himself before he can say anything and lowers his head, Minghao coking an eyebrow at him.

“I don’t think it is, but you will,” he says, still not looking at Minghao.

“Okay damn, what did you do.”

“Nothing yet! I just. Need your input. On something.”

Minghao sighs, reclining back in his chair, and Jeonghan tries out a smile that utterly fails at mollifying him.

“Spill.”

“Okay, so, like. How would you go about resurrecting the dead?”

Minghao splutters, eyes going impossibly wide.

“Excuse me, what?”

“Look, just hear me out, yeah? The guy in the dreams, he wants out, that’s why I see him all the time. If we were to get him out, there would be no more dreams to worry about.”

“So like, your idea of getting rid of a problem is to create an even bigger one?”

“Maybe he’s nice.”

“He killed his own brother.”

“Okay. I guess you got a point there. But he was punished for it, don’t you believe in rehabilitation?”

“Not when it concerns ancient evils we know nothing about.”

“We do know some stuff.”

“Yeah, we do.”

Minghao reaches for one of the letters unfolded on his desk, nodding for Jeonghan to take it. The sheet is old, yellowed and crisp under Jeonghan’s fingers, the ink faded, almost illegible at times. Jeonghan squints at the letter, slowly deciphering the elegant script of the person who wrote it.

_You asked so I will tell you. But know that I do not like it. This was not honorable, in any way. I did not like what we did to him and I did not like how everyone else was satisfied. I do not condone what happened, but his concerns were legitimate. I know you will think it is because I often disagreed with our departed head priest, because I did not like where we were headed, but you should think about it too. His exile was not a concerted decision and I still think we should not have pushed him away. Away from us, he could only go further down the dark path. Many mistakes were made, and you reap what you sow, as they say._

_Anyway, I summed it up for you. If you want more details you will have to come down here yourself. It’s not so cold anymore, and the kids keep asking after you._

_On the first day after the murder we could not even get close to him. Cold as death, he was, shadows pooling at his feet and we could not get near, nothing could, not even light. The second day we sent our own shades after him and they never came back, swallowed by his darkness, rendered harmless, grounded into dust. And then, on the third day, he let us in._

_It was easy, then. He said nothing. He knew we were scared. We sent the shades first, to restrict him, and his shadows were still there, clinging to the corners but they did nothing, just watched and whispered. You know the ritual we used. We summoned the tree, we carved out his flesh, and we buried him there, amongst the roots and the bones. An offering for the yew tree, another spirit to roam the plains. I do not know why they did not shatter his soul. Revenge, I think, for him to know, to feel the years pass, to see his body decay and his spirit wane, to feel the loss and the regret and to suffer._

_A life for a life I would have understood. But this, this does not sit well. Burn this letter when you read it. There is hostility and distrust among us. Strange, dark times are ahead._

Silence had stretched between them while Jeonghan read and it feels wrong to break it now, Minghao’s eyes trained on his face, looking for any trace of emotion. Jeonghan puts the letter back slowly, eye catching on the signature at the bottom of the page.

“Hao, it’s your last name.”

“Yeah. I found it amongst old family letters.”

Jeonghan swallows, throat dry, hands clammy where he rests them on his thighs.

“He didn’t deserve what he got.”

“He did not.”

“So we will help him?”

Minghao sighs, and Jeonghan feels suddenly very young, very naïve under his stare. And maybe he is; Minghao carries the weight of his bloodline, a lonely heritage of a family he barely knew, strange forces coursing through his veins, setting him apart. The remnants of an old world, and Jeonghan once more feels the cold thorns of his utter solitude piercing his skin.

“We will help him. We will help his soul move on.”

“What? But that’s unfair! He shouldn’t have – this shouldn’t have happened to him.”

“But it did. He was offered to the yew tree. You can’t take it back. You can’t leave an empty grave, there.”

It feels very cold, all of a sudden. Jeonghan watches as Minghao leans forward, running a hand through his hair and he’s leafing through a book, pointing things at Jeonghan but he’s not listening, there’s a ringing in his ears and he thinks back to the man under the tree, abandoned, alone and forgotten, his soul erring through plains of dry earth, white shroud catching on bones.

“I can’t…”

“You can’t what?”

“I can’t kill him, Hao.”

“He’s already dead.”

“But he’s not. I talked to him, I touched him, I saw his face and I know how he feels, he’s not dead, Hao, he’s not.”

Minghao puts down the book, biting his lips.

“Think about it, Jeonghan, okay? He needs to be released. I’ll wait until you say goodbye.”

It feels like a dismissal and Jeonghan stares at Minghao, at the worry he can see in his eyes and he knows he’s right, that it’s the right thing to do, but Jeonghan wants to be selfish, wants to bring back this piece of the old world and it has been too long, sitting there under a purple sky, it has been too long to say goodbye now.

**8.**

The cards still feel warm under his fingers, a soft pulse of a power he knows well, and Jeonghan stares at the deck, slowly going over the cards, the faces drawn there, their meaning pulled from the depths of his mind. He puts down the deck, neatly upon his desk, and the emptiness he feels seems to leak out, embracing the room, chasing shadows from every corner.

He should be asleep by now, but he can’t bear the thought of the last dream, the last time he’ll be able to see him and he wonders, too, when did he grow so attached but it’s easy; they had months together, sharing silences and timid touches, a soft kind of sadness making its home in Jeonghan’s bones, a soft kind of warmth spreading under his skin.

Yet he has to, he has to go back and say goodbye. And so, he does.

He’s alone, this time. The mountains in the distance seem almost taunting in their indifference, and Jeonghan walks over the dry earth, looking for the tree, for the grave he’ll find there.

_I was waiting for you_

Jeonghan stops, a familiar shuffling coming from behind him and when he looks there’s a hand on his wrist, tugging slightly, leading him in the right direction, under heavy branches and whispering shadows.

“I almost didn’t come.”

His own voice sounds strange to his ears, low and strangled and Jeonghan swallows, throat dry.

_Why not?_

Jeonghan sits beside the grave, the creature coming to a stop behind him and it’s opened, this time, the peaceful face crowned in yellow rues. Jeonghan extends a hand, brushing back the hair on his brow, staring, etching him in his mind.

“It’s the last time. We have a way to set you free.”

The creature remains silent, a low rattle letting Jeonghan knows it is still there.

“A way to free your soul. Make it move on. For good.”

_A true end_

“Yes. Is that alright?”

There’s whispers in the branches, shadows moving under an unfelt wind and Jeonghan shivers, gaze lost upon the man in the grave. 

_Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell; and in the lowest deep a lower deep, still threatening to devour me, opens wide_

“To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven,” Jeonghan finishes, voice barely heard above the whispers.

 _Goodbye. And thank you_

Jeonghan nods, fingers tracing the lines of Joshua’s face, down, down until he reaches the shroud folded upon his torso. He pulls it up, slowly, covering his lips, his nose, his eyes, and he leans in, when only the crown of yellow flowers is left, leans in and kisses him.

“Goodbye, Shua”, Jeonghan murmurs against the cloth, against his lips.

He leans back slowly, the cloth slipping from his fingers and there’s the low rumble of thunder echoing over the mountains. The sky is dark, too dark, and when Jeonghan looks shadows are swirling around him, words in his ears he still cannot understand but their sadness is there, threaded into their whispers and Jeonghan closes his eyes, knowing this is the last time, this is the last time, the last time.

He wakes at his desk, head resting on his crossed arms and the sigh that escapes him is halfway to a sob. The deck is still there and Jeonghan thumbs at the cards, carefully, wondering how they’ll feel, after. Cold, their power gone, mute like the dead. Jeonghan sits up, rubbing his face with cold hands and he thinks of the future, a future without dreams, without warm cards under his fingers, Minghao seated alone at his desk, one of the lasts, himself standing there behind the counter, reading love and death in silent cards.

And so, Jeonghan comes to a decision. He raises slowly, checking the time on his phone and it’s late, very late; Minghao must be long gone, up to his own room, his office remaining empty. Jeonghan slips out, careful to make no sound, socked feet gliding over the floor. He takes the stairs one step at a time, stay at the landing holding his breath, listening for any sound coming from the corridor. There’s nothing, and he tiptoes to the door at the far end, opening it carefully, locking it behind him.

Minghao’s office looks different in the light of Jeonghan’s phone. Almost eerie, the light washing over shelves packed full of books and strange instruments, painting moving shadows on the walls and Jeonghan’s almost afraid to breath. He shuffles to the desk, looking for the book Minghao was reading earlier and it’s still there, opened to a page Jeonghan peruses with wide eyes. The ritual is simple, almost too-much so; a send-off should be more dramatic, he thinks, something with blood and ominous chanting. He thumbs at the pages, looking for something else, something forbidden he knows must be here somewhere.

He doesn’t find it in this book. Doesn’t find it in the next one either, and he spends too much time trying to figure out Minghao’s classification system. Jeonghan concludes there isn’t any, and loses even more time freaking out over a whole section of books talking exclusively about ferns. It’s when the first rays of sunlight spill through the window that Jeonghan finally finds what he’s looking for, seated cross legged in front of the bottom shelves. It’s a small volume, written and bound by hand. Very old, the paper crisp under Jeonghan’s careful fingers, almost illegible at times, the ink washed away.

He clutches the volume to his chest as he runs off to his room, closing the door behind him with a sigh of relief. The room is still half-plunged in darkness, dawn slow to break. Jeonghan trudges to his desk, careful to remain silent – this feels like a stolen moment, those strange hours where everything is yet asleep and he could get away with anything, alone in the whole world, hidden away behind blind walls. The book smells of dust and olden times, the cover stiff when Jeonghan opens it. He turns on his desk light, brings his face closer to the page and it reads like a journal, someone long dead recounting their life. Someone like Minghao, like him, too, walking in dreams and lifting his gaze on a purple sky. And then, Jeonghan finds the page that caught his eye, back in Minghao’s office.

_There were whispers in the shadows and we heard them when preparing the body. Non voluntatem dei, they kept repeating, and we knew and we ignored them. He wasn’t dead for long and the body still held some warmth; we washed him and the monk braided amaranth into his hair. The whispers were still there, nimia curiositas, they said, and we knew and we ignored them. When the body was ready the monk gave me a heavy silver-handled knife and I hid it amongst my clothes. Then I laid down beside the body and called forth the dream. The tree was not as old then as it must be now, but it was still powerful. There were bones under my feet and shadows in the sky, deus non vult, they said, and I knew and I ignored them. He laid amongst the bones and the roots and I watched him and I took out the knife. I did not know if it would be painful or not, but when I plunged it into my chest it was not. I did not know then that it was the last time I would be standing there. The last time I would hear the whispers and the wind in the branches. I did not know what I was giving up, to get something back. I carved out my heart and laid it still beating upon his chest, and I did the same with my lungs and my stomach and my ribcage gaped open on an empty cave. I laid next to him then, I embraced him and I asked him, veni foras, veni foras, veni foras. And he did._

Jeonghan leans back in his chair, a long exhale escaping him. He swallows, reads the passage again and again, removing his hands from the book when they turn clammy. The person didn’t write much, after that, scattered phrases on yellowed pages. They got what they wanted, but Jeonghan can’t make sense of what they lost, in exchange. He understands the symbolism of the ritual, my life for your life, my death for your death. But Jeonghan has nothing he can offer. _You can’t leave an empty grave,_ Minghao had said, but what has he got to fill it with? He shifts, feeling a weight on his chest. His gaze drifts to the cards and he hesitates, but it’s useless, the cards already told him what he needs to know. The hanged man, dangling from his tree. The reversed hierophant, the defier, the renegade. Jeonghan bites his lips and there’s something of a relief in surrendering himself to his own power.

He knows his gift, knows that the cards and the visions merely show the current path, show what will be, if he were to walk it to the end. But he can always stray, he can escape from the shadow of the hanged man, from the gaze of the hierophant. Jeonghan sighs, tilts his head back and closes his eyes. He looks inwards, hands splayed over the wood of his desk, anchoring himself and what is it that you want, Jeonghan? _I want something to happen. The days pass and I don’t feel them. I want Minghao to be less sad. I want to mean something. I want to see the man under the tree._

Jeonghan opens his eyes, staring at the white ceiling overhead. The soft morning light chases shadows into the corners, another day washing over him. He makes a decision, then. The exchange, whatever it is, he’ll agree to it.

**9.**

Under pretense of continuing the cataloguing, Jeonghan goes back to the reserve. There must be a knife there, he reasons, maybe not silver-handled but at least a little magic. The room is inordinately cold, and Jeonghan shifts quickly between the shelves, gaze washing over crystals, dolls, wooden instruments and divinatory bones. He finds what he’s looking for just as he starts losing hope. On a bottom shelf lies an array of ritual paraphernalia – rosaries, prayer wheels, chalices, phials and winnowing baskets for offerings, scepters and small idols and there, tangled in a rosary, a knife.

Jeonghan draws it slowly. The blade is dulled, stained in places, and the handle is made of finely carved bone, volutes like smoke climbing onto the blade. It feels heavy in Jeonghan’s palm and he closes his eyes, grip tightening on the handle, looking for something to feel. It’s there, a quiet pulse, almost imperceptible but there all the same. It will do, Jeonghan decides, hiding it under his sweater before rushing to his room.

The day crawls by at an excruciatingly slow pace, Jeonghan standing restless behind the counter, selling the last of their sage to a quiet middle-aged woman. Someone comes by for a reading, too, a young man with anxious eyes and Jeonghan hesitates, retrieving another deck from the shelves behind him, a peaceful one, with a clear energy maybe more suited for the kind of reading the man is asking for. The cards feel different under his fingers, weightless and serene; Jeonghan thinks back to Joshua’s deck, the one he used for so long without wondering once about the restlessness of the cards, their heavy power, chaotic and warm. 

_Should I stay or should I go_ , the young man wants to know. The advice is there under Jeonghan’s fingers, and he turns over the last card of the spread. Eight of cups, and _it’s time to go,_ the cards say. The man has a strained smile, tinted with relief. He knew, Jeonghan thinks, he just wanted confirmation. He watches him go, the door shutting behind him with the jingle of the bell. A soft rain has started to fall outside, forestalling the night in dimming the light. Jeonghan watches the shadows grow into the shop and all he can think about is the knife, locked inside the drawer of his desk.

It weight over dinner, over the stilted conversation he has with Minghao who seems too careful around him, as if he was afraid to hurt him, as if he already had. They don’t talk about the dreams, don’t talk about the man under the tree and Jeonghan feels guilty, almost scared, as if Minghao would know everything by just looking at him. His unsaid truth is worse than an outright lie and his smile feels painful when he leaves the room.

Night has fallen and the corridor of the third floor is plunged in darkness, his little room full of shadows when he turns on the light. Jeonghan trudges to his desk, the weight on his chest crushing his lungs. He almost expects the knife to be gone when he opens the drawer but it’s still there, and Jeonghan takes it out carefully, laying it on the desk next to the amaranth bloom he stole from the pantry after staring at pictures on the internet for half an hour to make sure he got the right thing. He exhales deeply, putting the silver ring between the two and his desk almost looks like an altar, like this.

Jeonghan burns some incense, the familiar smell soothing to his nerves and he takes a few steps around the room, shaking his arms out as if he was about to perform a particularly taxing task. He guesses that he is, it’s just that he’ll be asleep while doing it. He goes back to his desk, putting the ring on his finger and they’d had the body, in the book, but Jeonghan has no way to know where Jeonghan remains would be, and maybe the body under the tree is all that there is.

He turns off the light, the room plunged in the semi-darkness of the early evening, and goes to lay down on his bed, the amaranth bloom in one hand, the knife in the other. Jeonghan waits, waits until the shadows stretch over the ceiling, until the noises die down, until the remaining light is but a sliver, until it’s neither day or night, until it feels right. And then, he calls forth the dream.

When Jeonghan opens his eyes he’s there, under the purple sky, standing over bones and earth. He looks down and the amaranth bloom has grown, purple-red flowers twining between his fingers, circling his wrist. He lifts his right hand, holding the knife, and the blade is sharp, shining in the dim light, the carving standing out against the bone and metal. He sighs, squaring his shoulders as if the gesture could give him confidence and maybe it does; Jeonghan starts walking, wishing for the tree.

_I wasn’t supposed to see you again._

Jeonghan stops and when he turns back the tree is there, gnarled branches twisting towards the earth, the field of moss and bones laying before it. There’s a shuffle, the familiar rattle of a breath on naked ribs and Jeonghan feels the presence, shadows clinging to its feet.

_I wasn’t supposed to see you again. What are you doing here?_

Jeonghan wets his lips, taking a step towards the tree, towards the grave laying amongst its roots.

“I’m trying.”

_Trying what?_

“You don’t need to know”, Jeonghan says as he keeps walking, kneeling to unearth the grave once he finds it. The presence remains quiet at his side, watching him dig out the bones with his bare hands, finding the shroud underneath and the body resting there. Jeonghan works quietly, and if time flew here it would be hours before he finally drags the body out of the grave to lay it out against a massive root. 

_No_

Jeonghan ignores the voice in his ears, ignores the urgent whispers of the shadows crawling out from beneath the moss, the smell of rain and earth clinging to their distorted shapes. He ignores the hand pulling at his shirt, ignores the rise of the wind and the darkening of the sky. He twines the purple bloom of the amaranth in Joshua’s hair, brushes dust off his cheeks, pulls the shroud from his chest.

_You cannot do this_

The voice keeps going as Jeonghan kneels next to the body, closing his eyes, hands clutching the knife.

_You don’t know what will be taken in exchange_

“I don’t care,” Jeonghan says, voice sturdier than he feels. “I still want to do it.”

_It won’t work_

“Stop talking.”

A long exhale, Jeonghan emptying his mind, picturing his own body there, kneeling on the bones of the dead and he’s looking for something, something old and knowing and powerful.

He finds it. A slow pulse, there under the earth, deep and deeper still. Jeonghan follows and it’s neither warm nor cold there, neither light nor dark; there’s shadows, curious murmurs and the pulse, the power strumming through the roots of the old tree, burrowing as deep as centuries go.

“There is something I want”, Jeonghan says, and everything listens, the earth and the sky and the bones under the tree. Shadows cling to him, twine in his hair and curl against his spine, a soft kind of sadness falling over him. Jeonghan swallows, feels his mind reach out, until something reaches back. It’s old, very old, old as the dark and the rain and the earth under his feet. It’s neither good nor evil, neither alive nor dead, it simply is and it listens, listens to each breath and each pulse and each thought in Jeonghan’s head.

“I don’t know what to give you in exchange. But if you do, you can take it.”

There’s pressing whispers in his ears, a thousand hands gripping him, tugging at his clothes and his hair and his mind. And then, nothing. Jeonghan opens his eyes and the shadows are gone, the creature is gone, an expectant silence settling over him, heavy like a held breath. It’s time, then, Jeonghan understands. His grip tightens over the bone handle of his knife before letting go and he takes off his shirt, folding it neatly beside him. He takes back the knife, weighing it in his hand before fitting the point against his breast. He can’t help but wonder if it will hurt, the cold touch of the knife against his skin yet barely felt. 

It doesn’t. The knife slices into him almost too easily, warm blood flowing from the wound and Jeonghan keeps slicing down, with assured gestures he knows aren’t completely his own. He plunges his hand into the wound, roots around the wet and the warmth and finds what he’s looking for; his own heart, beating against his palm, and it’s like picking a ripe apple, the heart falling into his hand at the slightest tug. He stares a long time, after he pulls it from his chest, placing it neatly upon the body laying in front of him. He goes for his lungs next and it’s harder, they’re heavy, slippery, and it is strange, when all breath leaves him. He places them upon the body’s chest, and it’s the stomach, next, the liver, the kidneys, his larynx and his guts, on and on until his body is empty.

Then Jeonghan lays down, chest gaping open, lays down and grabs the body’s cold hand, twines their fingers together, buries his head in the crook of his neck. _Veni foras_ , he asks. _Veni foras, veni foras._

**10.**

Jeonghan wakes to someone crying. His eyes open and he feels heavy, as if he’d slept for centuries. He stirs and the sobbing ends on a choked note, Minghao’s face leaning over his own.

“What have you done? I couldn’t wake you. What have you done?”

Jeonghan wants to speak but his voice is lost somewhere in his throat, his limbs heavy like lead and he tries out a smile but his face is frozen. He helplessly flails a hand and Minghao grabs it, warms it into his own and Jeonghan finds his breath again, staring up at Minghao, at the worry etched in his face.

“I just…”

“I can’t feel it. I can’t feel it in you anymore. Can you?”

“What are you…”

But Jeonghan knows, then. There’s something missing. Something hard to name, something that had always been there, twined in every breath, every heartbeat, every flash of his synapses. Jeonghan shifts as warmth comes back to his being, but there’s a cold spot, there under his heart, a cold emptiness where gold used to flow. 

“I… I can’t feel it either.”

His throat goes dry as Minghao’s face falls, and the hand grabbing his tightens painfully.

“Tell me. Tell me what you did.”

“I just… I asked for Joshua back.”

There’s a sharp intake of breath, Minghao dropping his hand to rub as his face and Jeonghan’s never seen him like this, anger, sadness and despair fighting over his features.

“What did you give, in exchange?”

“I didn’t know what to give, so I… I told the tree to take what it wanted.”

“Jeonghan…”

“He’s not here, though. Joshua isn’t here. So why can’t I feel anything? Why do I feel so cold?”

An ugly panic stirs within his belly and Jeonghan rises on the bed, grabbing at Minghao’s shirt, pulling him in and Minghao’s hands fall to his shoulders, forcing him back down, careful fingers brushing his hair back, catching on tangled strands.

“Hao, what do I do? I can’t… It feels so empty.”

Minghao swallows, touching Jeonghan’s brow as if checking for a fever and he feels so old, like this, old and tired and the cold inside Jeonghan grows, spreading from his chest to each of his limbs.

“I don’t know, Jeonghan. I don’t know. The ritual must have worked. The tree took what it wanted.”

“But why isn’t he here?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything, Jeonghan.”

Jeonghan sighs, hands falling from Minghao, something settling in his stomach, something heavy growing vines into his lungs and if he had tears to cry he would, but the cold spreading inside him freezes everything. Minghao grabs at his wrist, hand falling into his and his warmth can do little but Jeonghan holds on, gaze stuck to the ceiling.

“The ritual must have worked”, Minghao repeats, voice breaking. “He will come. He must.”

“What should we do, then?”

“There’s nothing we can do. Now, we wait.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quotes are from The witch of Coos by Robert Frost and Paradise Lost by John Milton. 
> 
> Thank you for making it this far!


	2. The Tower

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is full-on self indulgence and I apologize in advance for all the idiocy contained within.

**1.**

They wait for days. When the days turn to weeks, Jeonghan grows tired. He tries to call the dreams again but they have deserted him, just as the cards feel cold and empty under his fingers. The old world is hidden from him, he is mute and blind and he knows, now, what was the price to pay. He feels it in his bones, in the cold nesting under his skin, in the empty dreams he dreams. There’s something else he’s waiting for now, too, looking for it in Minghao’s every breath, every look he throws his way, every turn of his lips.

Jeonghan knows his place isn’t here anymore, that he lost it when he lost everything else. And so he waits, waits for Minghao to build up the courage to tell him, that he has no use for a blinded clairvoyant. But when he looks at him Minghao’s eyes are just sad, his lips parting on tentative smiles, small touches meant to comfort that only highlight the loss. And that’s worse, in a sense, this in-between they find themselves stuck in, Jeonghan standing quietly behind the counter as Minghao disappears in his office, looking for something, anything that could bring back the light. 

Jeonghan sprawls over the counter of the little shop, resting his eyes on a folded arm, flicking cards now devoid of power into the air and watching them flutter to the ground.

“Can you stop littering my shop?”

Minghao steps out of the red curtains, walking around the counter to bend down and retrieve the cards scattered on the floor. He pulls them into a neat deck and Jeonghan watches as he puts the cards back into their box on the counter and nonchalantly leans right next to him, knocking their shoulders together. Jeonghan sighs, head hanging low, fingers drawing abstract patterns on the wooden counter. It’s like he’s dying, he thinks, everyone in the room knowing the inevitable end and yet refusing to talk about it.

We used to bury the dead in churches, right there under our feet, the smell of rot wafting from under the stones. We used to burn them in open air pyres, we used to wash them ourselves, touching their cold flesh, combing their hair and cutting their nails. We used to prop them up for pictures and make jewelry out of their hair. Death used to be there with us, staring with empty sockets until it was our turn to step into the danse macabre. But it disappeared, when the old world was swallowed by the smog of chimneys and the inescapable march of progress. Death was relegated as an inconvenience we should postpone for as long as we can, instead of something to be expected, something to prepare for, something to accept, a dying of the light to witness.

And Jeonghan was the first one to rage against it, he knows, toppling a pile of bones to embrace the cold flesh laying there underneath, and _veni foras,_ he’d say, come back, back to the living, and yet nothing had come, and so much was lost. He knew, now, that Minghao had been right, but he’d refused it, had refused to submit, and he’d pay. As much a price as a punition.

Minghao’s voice breaks though his reverie then, gentle as if brusque sounds would hurt them both. He has to repeat himself when Jeonghan’s blank look tells him he didn’t hear a thing. 

“I’m going out, tonight. Do you want to come?”

Jeonghan pretends to think about it, despite knowing his answer before Minghao even finished talking.

“No, thanks, I’m good.”

A sigh, a shake of his head and Minghao nudges him gently, smiling. 

“You know there’s a whole world out there, right? Like, right outside the door.”

“That’s exactly why I don’t wanna go. There’s _people_ out there, Minghao. People.”

“You know, the only reason I take care of my health is that if I die before you, when your time comes, they’ll only find your rotted carcass like three years after your death and they’ll have to identify you from your teeth.”

“Gee, there’s a cheery thought.”

Minghao laughs, pushing off the counter to disappear behind the curtains.

“Don’t forget to lock up!” he calls from the stairs’ landing, climbing back up to his office. Jeonghan stays at the counter, mind almost painfully blank, a heavy tiredness settling over his limbs. He should do his tour of the store, he knows, putting back in their proper place the items disturbed by the day’s few customers. That’s the worst thing, too. The shop still feels as homey as it used to. Dusty and cluttered, too much useless trinkets and overpriced baubles that should perhaps start catching up to Minghao’s conscience. And yet it’s tainted, now, through no fault of its own. While everything remained the same Jeonghan changed, lost a crucial part of himself and thus nothing will ever feel the same anymore. The shadows seem darker, the light duller, the work tedious when it used to be soothing. And there is no way back to how it used to be.

Jeonghan slumps father over the counter, gaze falling on the neat box of cards left there by Minghao. He idly pushes it with an index finger, up to the edge of the counter, stopping right before it falls over. He brings it back to himself then, opening the lid to peak at the card on top of the deck. It’s face down, and so Jeonghan picks it up, shifting it in his hand. A big house, sitting atop a rocky cliff. Half of it is collapsing, rubbles hurtling to the hungry sea beneath, rain and thunder raging in the background. The Tower. Jeonghan laughs, a strangely empty sound breaking the silence of the darkened shop. He flicks his wrist, sending the card spiraling to the ground; watches it reach the end of its fall, lending on the dusty rug. There’s a sound, then, the jingling of the bell at the top of the door; he didn’t lock-up yet, but it’s too late for clients, and Jeonghan looks up. But his _sorry, we’re closed_ dies on his lips at the sight of the man standing on the threshold.

He seems shrouded in shadows, as if the darkness of the shop had leaped up to embrace him. And maybe it did, Jeonghan thinks, shadows clinging to his calves, prowling over his torso, over the slope of his shoulders, losing themselves in his hair. And Jeonghan stares, fitting the shape of the man’s face, the bow of his mouth, the curve of his eyes against the memory of the dead man in his dreams. And it’s him, it can only be him. The bell sounds again as the door closes and the man bends to the floor, retrieving the card there. His expression doesn’t shift when he sees the disaster that it shows.

“You should treat them better.”

“They’re yours,” Jeonghan blurts, and he recoils when the man looks up at him, a too tight feeling in his chest, heart beating too fast against his ribs.

“How did you know?”

“I just…” Jeonghan swallows, eyes darting to the side. “You feel the same.”

“I feel the same?”

The man takes a few steps towards Jeonghan, towards the light and yet he’s still standing in shadows. Jeonghan takes an involuntary step back, feeling the shelves behind him and there’s nowhere else to go, really, he has to face this, make it fit into his reality somehow. Joshua is here. Joshua heard him.

“Yeah. You know.”

Joshua tilts his head, an expression seemingly saying that no, he does not know, but he drops the subject, eyes searching Jeonghan’s face, drinking him in as if all his answers laid there.

“What did you lose?” he asks, his voice soft, and Jeonghan feels the sadness underneath it, the heart-wrenching knowledge that something must have been sacrificed, something irreplaceable.

“Can’t you feel it?” Jeonghan asks, extending his hand, palm up. Joshua stares for a short moment before reaching out, the tip of his fingers grazing Jeonghan’s palm, his own coming to rest against it, fingers curling around his wrist. _He’s warm_ , Jeonghan realizes with a jolt, and he moves his hand up to Joshua’s wrist, tightening his hold, looking for the pulse beating there. And he feels it, right there under his fingertips. It hits him, then, and he marvels at this pulse under the skin, so different. So different from the dead flesh he had felt under his fingertips, the rotting carcass he had sat next to as it whispered words in his head, so different from the man resting amongst a field of bones, heartbreakingly beautiful in death, yet it is the same face, the same voice, the same power he can feel thrumming underneath.

“I can’t. I can’t feel anything,” Joshua says, and has the finality of cold facts. There’s a sadness, there, too, a pity Jeonghan doesn’t want to hear.

“There is nothing left to feel. But it’s fine. It’s alright.”

He withdraws his hand, letting it fall to his side, and he watches as Joshua’s expression shifts, something hard in his eyes and that’s how he must have looked, all those centuries ago, standing against his brother, a righteous anger burning in his heart.

“Why?”

And Jeonghan has no answer to give him, none that he can say aloud. _I didn’t want us to be so alone anymore. Minghao sits at his desk and pours over books and letters and he’s looking for something he’ll never find, because there is nothing left to find. The world is empty, and you laid in your grave and you were so beautiful, and you were so sad, and the grief lodged in my bones. And I missed you, I missed you without knowing you._ He answers by another question, then, one that has Joshua smile, and Jeonghan didn’t know it was something he could do.

“Why did it take you so long to find me?”

“I had to find my way back. Everything was dark, and then it wasn’t, and I was standing upon a grave. My grave, my true grave in this world.”

Jeonghan nods, leaning forward as Joshua talks, and he watches him move, watches his mouth shape over words, watches his hand flicker in a small gesture, watches his eyes blink and the rhythm of his breaths. He wants to touch him again, wants to feel his pulse and ascertain that he is here, alive and real. No carrion beetle will crawl up from his decaying flesh anymore, no shards of bones will pierce his skin, no flowers will crown his lifeless face. And Jeonghan reaches out almost despite himself, lifts his hand and touches it to Joshua’s wrist across the counter, interrupting him. The pulse is still there, steady, the skin warm under his touch, and Jeonghan swallows around a lump in his throat. Joshua remains silent, watching him, and he doesn’t move when Jeonghan let’s go of his wrist, steps closer still when Jeonghan’s hand travels up his arm, traces the line of his collarbones over the collar of his shirt, moves to the angle of his jaw, the edge of his cheekbones, the curve of an eyebrow. And then, Jeonghan seems to realize what he is doing, withdrawing his hand with a jolt, knocking back into the shelves as he steps away.

“I’m sorry. That was way inappropriate. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Joshua smiles again, shaking his head, pushed back hair falling over his brow.

“I don’t think there’s a protocol for this kind of situation.”

“Yeah, I guess not.”

And they stare at each other, silence falling over them, sheltering them from the outer world. It feels like there would never be enough time, really, not enough time to understand, to know what to do next; it’s like standing at the edge of dark chasm, not knowing if the fall will kill you, or if it’s merely a drop. Jeonghan closes his eyes, grateful for the shelves behind him against which he can lean. And there’s Joshua’s voice, too strange to hear without the rattle of a breath on naked ribs.

“Can I touch you, too?”

Jeonghan nods without opening his eyes, listening to Joshua’s steps getting closer and he holds his breath in anticipation, waiting, waiting to feel the fingers on his skin. There’s a tentative touch, first, fleeting against his cheek. An intake of breath, and the fingers are back, tracing the lines of his face, lingering against his jaw, the side of his neck, dropping to grab at his hand and Jeonghan looks, then, looks down to their linked fingers and Joshua’s skin seems golden in his.

“It has been so long. I had forgotten how it felt.”

Jeonghan smiles, gaze drifting to Joshua’s face and he’s staring down at their hands, too. There’s something building there, Jeonghan can feel it, a soft kind of intimacy, tentative touches and shy words yet it feels so familiar, as if they had known each other a long time ago. And maybe they did, the dreams so faraway now, fading out of Jeonghan’s memories, forever lost.

“I am grateful,” Joshua says as he looks up, gazing too intently at Jeonghan. “I am grateful, yet I am sorry.”

“It was my choice,” Jeonghan shrugs, withdrawing his hand, and he stares at his fingers as if Joshua’s touch should have left a trace there.

“What happens now?” he asks, and Joshua’s still watching him, head slightly tilted to the side, dark eyes searching. 

“I don’t know,” he says.

**2.**

Tea happens. Jeonghan gets Joshua to sit at the table while he flits around the kitchen, boiling water, retrieving mugs, shifting through Minghao’s collection of dried herbs. He settles on the one Minghao always make at the end of the day, to chase the tiredness and clear the mind. It feels odd, to have Joshua here, in such a familiar place. Everything feels different. Even the night outside the windows feels darker, somehow, darker and closer, and if he opened the window maybe there would be nothing to see, their little home shielded, hidden from the world by the darkest of nights.

Jeonghan can feel Joshua’s eyes on him as he tidies up the counter, as he pours water into the mugs, as he takes his place at the table. He has something to say, it seems, and when Jeonghan is finally settled, he leans towards him, a soft smile tugging at his lips. 

“You haven’t noticed, have you?”

“Noticed what?” Jeonghan asks, putting back down the mug he had raised to his lips. It’s yet too hot to drink.

“The shadows. They follow me, but they follow you, too.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

And yet he does. Too dark shadows clinging to the corners of the room when he walks in, no light powerful enough to chase them away. Nights gloomier than they used to be, their darkness curling upon his chest as he sleeps. Movements in the mirror, shadows he can never catch when he whirls around.

“You left something in the dream. But you took something with you, too.”

“What are they?”

Joshua shrugs, looking down into his mug and Jeonghan allows himself to stare, something almost painful tugging at his heart, something of the sorrow etched in Joshua’s face, in his eyes, a deep grief for all things lost and forgotten.

“I don’t know. They’re old things. Spirits of the dead, maybe, of the earth, of the feelings laid before the tree. They’re old and they’re powerful and I know they love me, and I think they love you, too. Sometimes they attach themselves to certain people, and they will take care of you, if you take care of them.”

“How do I take care of them?”

“Do not hate them. They just want warmth, and acceptance.”

“Isn’t that what everyone wants?”

Joshua laughs, and it suits him, despite his sad eyes, despite his old soul.

“I guess so.”

Jeonghan nods, sipping at his tea, sparing a glance at the dark space beyond the kitchen door, and _it’s alright_ , he wants to say, _you can come in_. _I have enough room for you to fill_. And then he remembers something, from the account he had read in Minghao’s office; _shadows pooling at his feet, and we could not get near_.

“Are those… When your coven came for you, I read a letter, and they said there were shadows, with you, a darkness they could not get through.”

Joshua nods, sipping at his tea before answering, and he doesn’t look at Jeonghan when he speaks.

“Yes. They are the same. They will protect you, if you ask. If you lend them your anger, they will do more.”

Silence falls as Jeonghan lets the words sink in, hands wrapped around his mug. There is nothing he has to be protected from. There is no anger in him. Not anymore.

“Can they tell me things?”

“Tell you things?”

“I used to be able to see. I would know stories, old ones and some that hadn’t taken place yet. I could know the path and choose to walk it. I could walk in dreams and find comfort and knowledge there. But I’m blind, now, and I miss it. All is cold, all is empty.”

Joshua nods, his gaze on him and Jeonghan knows it’s for him that his eyes grieve, now, and it is too heavy a burden to bear.

“Ask them.”

“What?”

“Ask them.”

“How?”

“Make up your own way,” Joshua shrugs, “they will listen, if you are honest. A ritual is not one because it has existed for centuries. It is one because you believe in it, because your sincerity gives it power.”

“The one I used to bring you back…”

“Probably has only been used by you, and by the people who made it up. It is a manifestation of will, through a symbolism powerful enough that it worked.”

“That’s it?”

“That is it.”

“It’s a bit underwhelming.”

Joshua laughs, and the heavy mood lifts instantly.

“Sorry. I will be on the lookout for arcane knowledge.”

“I sure hope so. So far as an evil dark lord you’re kind of disappointing.”

“Would you take me more seriously if I was wearing robes and a cape?”

“Only if there’s a pointy hat to go with it.”

Joshua is about to retort when there’s a noise at the door, and Jeonghan looks up in alarm. _Minghao._ He had forgotten about him. The corridor lights up, footsteps coming towards them after the thud of shoes thrown haphazardly. From the corner of his eyes Jeonghan can see Joshua gazing at him but he keeps staring at the kitchen door, trying to figure out what he should say, when the corridor spats Minghao into the room. He blinks owlishly up at them, eyes going wide when he spots Joshua. But under the surprise there’s something else. Recognition, maybe, and when Jeonghan looks Joshua is standing up, taking a step towards Minghao, lifting his arm before letting it fall in an aborted gesture. Neither talks, staring at each other, and Jeonghan is about to say something before Joshua beats him to it.

“You feel like them. You are one of them.”

Jeonghan isn’t sure if it’s an accusation, a fact, or a question. He stands up too, hovering uncertainly near the table, staring at Minghao, body tense as if a fight would break out any second.

“I am,” Minghao says, voice unsure, and he’d never looked like this before, fear, awe, and anguish shifting across his features. He’s poised like an animal ready to flee and his gaze darts to Jeonghan, spotting the mugs, the kettle on the stove.

“You guys were drinking tea? You were drinking tea with. With Sinistrad over there. How mundane.”

“Sinistrad?” Joshua asks, pointing at himself.

“He doesn’t know who Sinistrad is. I need to sit down. I’m too plastered for this.”

Jeonghan flies to his side then, taking his arm to guide him to a chair and Minghao sits heavily, burying his face in his hands.

“Minghao. I don’t know who Sinistrad is, either,” Jeonghan says then, quietly.

There’s an anguished groan coming from Minghao’s general direction and Jeonghan glances at Joshua who looks both amused and worried. And he’s hovering, too, hands fleeting towards Minghao as if he wanted to touch him before remembering himself. Jeonghan understands, then. _You feel like them_. You feel like family, he’d meant. Like all those he thought he’d lost forever. Like the one he murdered himself.

“I’m just gonna pretend this isn’t happening and go to bed.”

Minghao struggles to get up, leaning on Jeonghan’s offered arm.

“And then when I wake up in the morning I’m gonna have a big breakfast, and I’ll see none of your faces until I want to.”

“Okay?”

“Great. That’s great. There’s a resurrected evil wizard standing in my kitchen. I love it. Goodnight.”

They watch him disappear down the corridor, still muttering under his breath, hands gesturing in front of him as if he was addressing a crowd. They hear a door bang upstairs, and Jeonghan turns to Joshua with a contrite expression, but the man is still gazing at the corridor, where Minghao stood not a minute ago.

“What is his name?”

“Xu Minghao.”

Joshua nods, slowly, committing the name to memory.

“You said the magic I felt on you was not your own.” 

“Yeah. It was his.”

“I did not think… I did not think there would be anyone left. I did not think I would meet them.”

“If you can call that meeting.”

They laugh then, looking at each other, and a sudden tiredness falls over Jeonghan as he sits back down, limbs heavy. Minghao chose to pretend it wasn’t happening but it is, and Jeonghan doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, what is supposed to follow. And there’s this feeling, too, the one he has each time he looks at Joshua. Something wistful and longing that takes roots in his belly, grows under his heart and he wants to touch him again, wants to hear his voice, wants to take the sorrow in his eyes and make it his own. But he does none of that. He stays seated, instead, eyes cast down, looking at his hands motionless in his lap.

“He’ll come around, you know,” he says, only to fill the silence that threatens to stretch between them.

“It’s okay. I am not expecting him to leap into my arms.”

“Good. He’s not really the leaping type.”

Joshua snorts, sitting down too, fiddling with the mug where his tea has gone tepid.

“Do you want to go to bed, too?” Jeonghan asks him. “We can all talk it out in the morning. After his big breakfast.”

“I feel like I have slept enough for now,” Joshua answers, a wistful smile on his lips. “Would you stay awake with me?”

The question is almost pleading, and Jeonghan cannot say no.

“Do you want me to show you around? I assume you’re gonna stay here, after all.”

“Sure,” says Joshua, and Jeonghan leads him into the corridor, their voices lowering to a whisper, careful steps and quiet gestures, as if Minghao could hear them from his drunken slumber. Jeonghan leads him to the shop, first, and they find themselves stumbling amongst the shelves in the dim half-light. Jeonghan grows animated then, talking about this place he loves, about his home, a warm feeling in his chest.

“Does he actually sell all this useless stuff?” Joshua asks, thumbing a book about ferns.

“Yeah, he does.”

“And he doesn’t feel bad about it.”

“Not one iota,” Jeonghan says, shaking his head as he puts back onto the shelf a pouch of dried herbs that might just be grass.

“The head priest would so have not approved.”

“And do you?”

“A guy got to eat,” Joshua shrugs, putting the book back where he found it.

“He collects real things, too. But he does not sell them.”

“Can I see?”

Jeonghan is tempted to say yes, but he knows Minghao doesn’t allow anyone else in the reserve, and maybe he already defied him enough for one lifetime.

“You should ask him.” 

After the shop it’s the first floor, with Minghao’s office in which they do not enter, a small shared bathroom where Joshua marvels at the shower and for the first time asks what year it actually is, which sends him in a spiral he only recovers from when Jeonghan shows him the library.

They built the high shelves themselves one summer week, covering the walls with Minghao’s impressive book collection and Jeonghan’s more modest one, fiction and essays and the heavy, obscure treaties Minghao likes to read. They salvaged a sunken couch and covered it in fluffy cushions, Minghao’s dad old armchair presiding in a corner. It’s then that Jeonghan understood this was his home, truly, that Minghao had cleared this space for them to share.

And now he watches Joshua go from shelves to shelves, fingers flitting over the spines of the books, taking one out to thumb at the pages before another grabs his attention and he looks young, suddenly, a weight lifted from him if only for a moment and Jeonghan wonders if this is what he looked like, before, a carefreeness about him that disappeared under the earth. 

“Can I stay here?”

“Sorry?”

“Can I stay here tonight.”

“Sure,” Jeonghan says, and Joshua smiles a smile he hadn’t seen before, something that pulls at Jeonghan’s heart, at the roots in his belly and he shouldn’t feel so sad, he knows, but he does, a wistfulness settling in his bones and he wants to take this smile into his being, keep it there where it’s safe, where there’s room to fill.

When Joshua finally settles on a book and curls up in the armchair Jeonghan knows it’s time for him to leave and he bids his goodbyes, retiring to his small room at the top of the stairs.

**3.**

The door closes behind him with a soft thud and Jeonghan leans against it, a heavy breath escaping his lungs. He lets himself slip to the floor and his gaze wanders the room half shrouded in darkness, mind stuck on the image of Joshua downstairs, swallowed by the armchair, a book in his lap, face peaceful as he’d never seen him. Jeonghan closes his eyes, tiredness washing over him, and he should go to his bed but he’s too drained to move. Maybe he could sleep right there, the dreamless sleep he sleeps, cold and empty and too much like death. He remembers, then, the words exchanged over tea, _can they tell me things?_ and Joshua’s simple answer, _ask them_.

Jeonghan opens his eyes, surveying the room once again, staring at the darker corners where shadows cling. But nothing seems to be here, nothing answers when he calls and so he gets up, trudging to his little altar where he kneels, putting a new incense stick in the ashes of the burnt ones. _Make up your own way._ He lets the incense burn for a while, lets his smell permeate the room, before joining his hands in front of his face in a praying gesture. More than praying he’s supplicating, he knows, for something to hear, for something to help.

He stays silent, eyes closed, waiting, and it’s a while before something starts, whispers at the edge of his hearing, words he cannot understand but remembers all the same. Something else changes, too, the air in the room heavier, somehow, colder, too, weightless things pressing against him, against each other, and Jeonghan keeps his eyes closed, a smell of earth and rain overtaking the wooden undertones of the incense.

“Welcome,” Jeonghan says, voice strangely loud in the quietness of the room. “I am sorry I didn’t notice you before.”

The murmurs grow louder, gentler, too, and something like mist touches him, a cold spot on his wrist.

“You can stay as long as you like. It’s a strange company but I don’t mind it, I’ve been alone for so long, I’d like it if you would stay. I can’t understand what you say, though. But maybe you can show me. I used to dream, I used to read things in cards. I can’t anymore, but maybe I can understand you, if you can show me.”

The murmurs fade, growing silent in a pondering moment but Jeonghan can still sense the shadows, cold pressing against him and it feels like laying on dewy grass in autumn, and he likes it, he finds, earth and rain and something old, too, something of the bones and the grey moss growing between them. And then, there’s a ripple, something going through him, through the room, and he opens his eyes despite himself. It’s dark, darker than it was and when he looks down he’s shrouded in shadows, just like Joshua was, standing at the threshold of the shop. Soft shadows clinging to his wrists, curled up on his lap, tangling in his hair. He stares, and he understands their assent; they have accepted him, just like he accepted them.

Jeonghan stands up carefully, slightly unsteady after kneeling for so long. He moves to the bathroom and it’s always the same; he steps out of his clothes, neatly folding them before changing into an old worn shirt and threadbare pants. He washes his face, his teeth, brushes his shoulder-length hair and stares at himself in the mirror, counting the lines of his face and this time, he sees them, the shadows over his shoulder, and maybe he’s not so oblivious anymore, maybe he’s starting to see, what it is that is out there.

Laying on his bed he curls up under the covers, warmth and darkness lulling him to sleep. And this time, he dreams.

_He’s standing in a library not unlike his own and he’s not alone there, three men at the door facing a fourth who cannot see him, and he’s made of fury, Jeonghan understands, dark shadows pooling at his feet; there’s blackthorn creeping on the ground, violet flowers blooming amongst their thorns. And the lone man steps forward, his shadows growing; there’s terror on the faces of the men facing him but there is no pity for them to find. The shadows feel old, much older that Jeonghan’s own, old and almost evil; they fly through the air like birds of prey, the man snarling, thousand voices threaded in his own and Jeonghan understands, then, there is something else, here, someone else, someone he has to hide and protect._

Jeonghan wakes covered in cold sweat, and the light streaming through the window tells him it’s already well into the morning. He looks down, half expecting blackthorn to bloom on his sheets but the room is empty; the shadows have retreated to their corners and only the wild beating of his heart reminds him of what he just saw. And he knows it was real, too, something that happened or has yet to pass, but these people were real, and the man was like him, like Hao, like Joshua downstairs and maybe they’re not as alone as he thought they were. 

He forces himself out of bed, and the sounds of the house slowly slips into his sleepy brain. The pitter patter of rain against the window, footsteps from the floor below, water in the pipes. His mind feels clearer, somehow, rested, and before leaving his room he bows to the altar, giving thanks for the dream, for being allowed to see.

When Jeonghan steps downstairs, there’s animated voices streaming down the corridor and he stops at the kitchen door, listening, curiosity taking the better of him.

“How does it work?”

It’s Joshua’s voice, and it pulls at something in him, something warm that Jeonghan pushes back down to hear Minghao’s answer.

“I actually don’t really know. Like, radio waves? You send a signal to some antenna and it relays it to another and shit. And there’s like, telecommunication satellites in space.”

“Satellites.”

“You know, like the moon but man-made?”

“And they allow you to send instant letters to people.”

“If they have a phone too, yeah. And you need to have their number.”

“Okay.”

“Do you understand?”

“Not one bit. What’s an antenna?”

“Okay, great! More tea?”

“Sure.”

Jeonghan enters as Minghao’s getting up to fetch the kettle and both men look up at him, Joshua clutching Minghao’s phone in his hands. It’s a strange scene, really, quaint in its domesticity but Jeonghan can feel the tension strumming underneath; it’s in Minghao’s guarded stance, in Joshua’s watchful eyes. Jeonghan grabs a chair, feigning the nonchalance he doesn’t feel, asking for the toasts and butter laying at Joshua’s elbow.

“You guys best friends yet?”

“Don’t push it,” Minghao says as he slams a mug of tea in front of Jeonghan, the liquid sloshing over the side. “I still don’t trust him.”

“You know I am right here, right?” Joshua says, only for Minghao to turn to him with an unsettlingly cheerful smile plastered on his face.

“I’m a partisan of the tried and true principle of telling people whatever the fuck you think of them right to their faces.”

Joshua laughs, putting down the phone he still held.

“You know, you really are like the Xu’s I knew sometimes.”

Minghao’s look changes instantly, and Jeonghan can see the hopeful curiosity etched in his face despite his attempts at hiding it under a scowl. He doesn’t know if it’s on purpose, this mention of Minghao’s ancestors, but if it’s Joshua’s way of winning him over, he’s on the right path. There was always something desperate in Minghao’s obsessive collecting of anything related to his family. Documents, heirlooms, a prayer wheel his great-great grandma may have touched once, maybe, in passing. And Jeonghan knows it’s the only way for him to connect to a past that was stolen from him, to a family he barely knew. Just as Jeonghan took refuge in dreams, Minghao built a fortress of memories to keep the loneliness at bay.

“Don’t play with my emotions,” Minghao says, sternly, but his eyes look amused, something self-deprecating in the turn of his lips.

“I am not, cross my heart and hope to die.”

“That doesn’t count. If you die this idiot right here will probably go after you again and it will be back to square one.”

“Can we not talk about death and dying while I’m having my breakfast,” Jeonghan asks, half a toast in his mouth.

“Fine. I’ll let you guys tidy up because I have a nervous breakdown over Sinistrad here scheduled for right now,” Minghao says, wiping his hands on a dishcloth. “But we’ll talk later. When I figure out what the fuck we’re supposed to do now.”

“You can just do nothing,” Joshua says to Minghao’s retreating back, earning himself a helpless gesture as Minghao disappears into the corridor.

“I still don’t know who Sinistrad is,” Jeonghan says sadly, standing up to clean his plate. Joshua smiles, diverting his attention with the phone.

“He’s right, though. I don’t know what I should do now.” Joshua says, voice quiet. “I really don’t.”

Jeonghan stares at the water running from the faucet over the plate he holds listlessly. He has no answer to give, and so, he chooses an offering instead.

“I had a dream.”

He turns around as Joshua stands up, gathering his mug and his plate, awkwardly holding them in his hands.

“A dream?”

“Yeah,” Jeonghan says, grabbing the plate from Joshua to put it in the sink. “I did what you said. I talked to the shadows and I asked them to show me.”

“Show you what?”

“I didn’t specify,” Jeonghan says, taking the mug from Joshua’s hand. “I just asked them to–”

Their fingers brush, something crashes, and Jeonghan’s vision goes black.

_And then he opens his eyes on a vaulted ceiling made of stones but it’s on earth that he rests. He realizes that he is outside, under an open gallery where his body lays like a recumbent on a bed of earth and bones. He sits up, limbs heavy and body stiff; the wall behind him offers enough support for him to stand and he takes a step and another, beyond the arch of the gallery. The moon greets him, looming full above an empty plain. Only when he sees the ruins does he understand where he is. They stand away from him, two crumbling walls and the remnants of a spire, a church, then, and it’s not hard to know that the earth that spit him belongs to a graveyard. He looks down, and he was not alone in the grave – fragments of bones shine a dull white in the moonlight, the empty sockets of a skull staring up at him. He stumbles, towards the ruined church and it is empty when he steps in, the altar smashed, the windows broken. He walks up the nave, tripping over rubbles and the invading grass, scaring the birds lodging there, who take flight at his approach. There is nothing, there, or so he thinks – someone waits for him in the first chapel of the apse._

_The statue stands in an alcove, its empty sockets staring at the sky. Bones pierce its stone skin, its stomach gaping open, putrid flesh clinging to its naked ribs. A shroud is draped over its shoulders, tumbling around its hips and in its wasted hand it holds an arrow, pointing at anyone who would look upon it. Jeonghan stares, the image agonizingly familiar. The statue leans its foul shape against a shield, engraved with an inscription half erased by centuries of wind and rain._ I sleep in dust and filth, _it reads._ Do not come into the world looking for me anymore.

Putredini dixi pater meus es mater mea et soror mea vermibus _._ _I said to putrefaction, you are my father, to vermin, you are my mother and my sister._

**4.**

Jeonghan comes to laying on the couch of the library. A heavy smell hang in the air, something earthly he cannot identify and when he looks down there’s a censer burning at the foot of the sofa. There’s Joshua, too, seated cross-legged on the ground, back resting against the couch, head tipped back on the cushion, eyes closed. Jeonghan shifts, sitting up, and he stares at his peaceful face for a fleeting moment, mind still full of the images he’d seen, the common grave, the church, the skeletal statue and its pointed arrow. And Joshua’s perfect face juxtaposes with another image Jeonghan would rather not see; he’d been the same rotting corpse, once, trudging on a desolate plain, slumbering in a shallow grave.

Without thinking Jeonghan extends a hand, carefully brushing back Joshua’s hair from his brow and he jolts when the man’s eyes snap open.

“Sorry,” he says, folding his hand against his chest. “I thought you were asleep.”

Joshua smiles, sitting up and turning around to face Jeonghan.

“It’s okay. How are you feeling?”

“Better. Fine. I feel fine.”

“What happened?”

Jeonghan hesitates, staring at Joshua, at his open face and dark eyes, and he’s alive, really, here for him to touch and to feel and to talk to. 

“I’m not sure,” he says. “I touched you, and I woke up in a graveyard. I walked to the ruins of a church and there was a statue there, with something engraved on a shield. Some Latin I don’t remember and something like _I sleep in ash and filth –_ ”

 _“– Do not come into the world looking for me anymore.”_ Joshua finishes for him. “Yeah, I know this place. Those were my memories. I woke up in this grave, I walked to this church and I saw this statue.”

Jeonghan stares, mouth slightly opened and Joshua looks amused, touching a finger to Jeonghan’s chin, pushing until it closes.

“I guess the shadows really do show you things.”

“If I’m gonna black out each time I touch someone this is going to become a problem real quick.”

“You’re going around touching everyone?”

“That’s not what I meant!” Jeonghan flails, drawing a laugh from Joshua. But then the real meaning of the words sink in, and a wave of sadness washes over him, bringing a wistful look to Jeonghan’s face that quiets Joshua’s laugh.

“They dumped your body in a mass grave, after having jailed your spirit.”

“They didn’t dump him,” a third voice answers, and they both look towards the door where Minghao appears, holding a steaming bowl in both hands.

“What?”

Minghao enters, kneeling next to Joshua and offering Jeonghan the bowl, producing a spoon seemingly out of nowhere. It’s a simple soup, pumpkin and chestnuts and the smell of cumin mixing with the still burning incense.

“They didn’t dump him. Common graves were, well, common in your days, right? After the wasting of the flesh they would have moved the bones to the ossuary above the gallery. They still respected you enough for proper burial. Or loved you, maybe, despite everything.”

Joshua’s head hangs low, gazing at his hands in contemplation and it’s something else that he sees, Jeonghan knows; his own flesh decaying in the earth, maybe, or the space in the rafters kept for his bones. The faces of people who used to be his family, washing his remains, sewing his corpse into a shroud, leaving his face uncovered as was the custom. And Minghao is right, they didn’t have to do all this, they could have left him to rot where he fell.

Jeonghan remains silent, spooning soup into his mouth and he only realizes how cold he is when its warmth burns his insides. It must have been how Joshua felt, when he woke up from the earth, cold and empty and lost, the skeletal herald of death the only one here to welcome him back.

“You are right,” Joshua says, voice tired. “I am not sure what to think anymore.”

Minghao shrugs, putting the lid back on the censer as Joshua lies down, arms extended on either side.

“To be perfectly honest I’m more interested in you,” he says, looking at Jeonghan. “Since when are you some sort of psychometric medium?”

Jeonghan swallows, looking at Joshua who stays suspiciously still and silent, laying there on the floor. But Jeonghan doesn’t want to lie to Minghao any more than he already did, and so he tells him, about the shadows and the prayer and the unexpected results it brought.

“Oh, that’s just great,” Minghao says, looking at Joshua who has crossed his hands over his belly. “Just go around teaching dark magic, I won’t say anything.”

Just as Jeonghan wisely decides to spoon more soup into his mouth, Joshua sits up, laughing.

“It’s not dark magic. It’s just what it is. He’s the one to decide how to use the shadows. So far it’s pretty harmless.”

“Yeah, if we conveniently forget about the whole fainting business.”

“He can learn to control it, to be better at it. You can teach him, if you do not trust me.”

“Oh, I can now?”

“You must know the old magic. We can’t have lost everything.”

“Well, we did,” Minghao says, voice final. Jeonghan knows that he’s lying. The old magic is still there, in the journals and letters, in the old parchments and dusty books Minghao gathered over the years, the ones he keeps on tall shelves in his office. Judging by the look Joshua gives him, he must know it, too; he must feel the power pulsing through the house, through the wood of the floors and the bricks of the walls, hidden away in the reserve, locked behind an office door.

“I know things,” Joshua says. “I know the beginning, and you know the end. I can give you what you miss.”

“I do not want it,” Minghao says. “Not from you. You’re the one who brought the end.”

A veil of sorrow falls over Joshua’s face and he lowers his eyes, staring at his hands, at the silver ring shining there.

“I did not want it to go like this.”

“And yet it did. The dead don’t care about your intentions.”

Joshua’s breath hitches, and Jeonghan’s gaze flies to Minghao, to his cold face, his dark eyes and sometimes it hurts him too, how hostile he can be. Yet Jeonghan knows this is mostly posturing; Minghao’s a wounded animal, each of his action dictated by self-preservation. 

“Do you know what happened, after my death?” Joshua suddenly asks, voice subdued and he looks young, like this, vulnerable like he never seemed and vines tighten around Jeonghan’s heart.

Minghao stares, thoughtful, and his face softens, then. He reclines back on his hands, head tilted towards the ceiling and he must have recognized Joshua’s quiet desperation, Jeonghan thinks, the loneliness of the lost. He bears the same under his heart.

“No,” Minghao says, almost too quietly. “I don’t really know. When I was born the coven didn’t exist anymore. My father didn’t have any magic, and my mum hid hers from him. When she died, I looked for anything that could give me an explanation. I found a lot of things. But all I could piece together is that the coven scattered. They couldn’t stand against the changes of the world. They scattered and they hid and they disappeared.”

The hard edge of Minghao’s voice breaks on the last word and he falls quiet, closing his eyes and laying back on the floor, side by side with Joshua who stares up at the ceiling, his expression unreadable. Waking up in a lonely, empty world, what would Jeonghan do? Nothing, he thinks, and he puts his bowl down next to the censer, the wooden smell of its smoke permeating the air. He stares at the two witches, laying there side by side, separated by centuries of loss and resentment. And yet so similar, desperately looking for somewhere to belong, somewhere to be.

“I think I can help,” he says without thinking, immediately met by two pairs of dark eyes and as many raised eyebrows.

“I mean… If I can dream again, maybe I can dream something useful.”

“Dream,” Minghao says, sitting up. “You mean getting the shadows to show you things?”

“Oneiromancy,” Joshua joins in, sitting cross-legged beside Minghao. “It is used to predict the future, but it can be used to see the past. You know it, don’t you?”

“It’s dangerous,” Minghao replies, decidedly not looking at Joshua.

“It won’t be, if you help.”

“If I help?” Minghao shrieks, probably meaning to sound aggrieved but coming out half curious, and a half-smile blooms on Joshua’s lips.

“Yes. If you help. There’s no harm done in trying.”

“Says the guy who got buried for centuries under a magic tree precisely for crimes of trying too hard.”

“I promise there will be no burial this time.”

Minghao stares at Joshua who stares right back, each sizing the other one up. It’s a challenge, Jeonghan understands, and Minghao was never one to balk from those. And on cue he nods, slowly, Joshua’s smile growing.

“Alright,” he says. “We’ll try.”

**5.**

Minghao disappears in his office, for “preparation”. He goes into the reserve to find old books and buries himself in their yellowed pages; when he emerges for food he smells of dust and too much work. And during this time, Jeonghan waits. Waits and watches. Watches Joshua try to tame this new world he finds himself in, and there’s some battles he’s happy to witness. The microwave debacle. The shower scare. Some are less amusing, like the one time they tried to walk outside and had to go back almost immediately, Joshua locking himself up in the library for the rest of the day. But slowly, Joshua builds himself a small, manageable world inside their home. And something inside him is starting to shine, something that draws Jeonghan in and soon they find themselves talking in hush whispers, laughing well into the night, curled up on the old couch of the library. 

And Jeonghan is eager to hear more, see more, give more of himself. There’s nothing Joshua isn’t curious of, and Jeonghan finds himself talking until his voice gets raw. And he wants more, too. He wants to touch and to feel and sometimes he sits a little too close, leans in a little too much, but Joshua never seems to mind, touching hands and brushing hair out of eager eyes. Soon Jeonghan finds that he doesn’t want this to change, this strange, suspended moment where there’s nothing to do but be, languidly lazing in each other’s presence. But all good things come to an end, and one late afternoon Minghao steps into the library, calling their attention with a polite cough.

Jeonghan lifts his eyes from the book he was reading, sprawled on the floor at the foot of the armchair where Joshua lounges, an encyclopedic volume opened in his lap.

“I think I’m ready.”

“Ready?” Jeonghan repeats daftly.

“Yeah. Oneiromancy. We can try it.”

“You mean right now?”

“I don’t see the point in waiting any longer,” Minghao shrugs, and Jeonghan sits up, swapping a glance with Joshua who nods, closing his book to put it aside on the gueridon.

“Let’s go, then,” Joshua says, and they follow as Minghao turns to leave.

He leads them to his own room, and Jeonghan realizes he’d never been inside, not since he’d helped move the furniture. It hadn’t changed much, the space neat and tidy, one painting hanging above the bed as the only decoration. A reproduction, _sleep and his half-brother death_ , and Jeonghan stares at the peaceful faces of the sleepers, wondering why death follows him so. _Putrefaction is my father, vermin, my mother and my sister._

“You gotta lay down,” Minghao says, pointing at his own bed, effectively ripping Jeonghan out of his thoughts. He nods, doing as he’s told, watching as Minghao places a censer near his head, the smell of lavender wafting through the air.

“It will help you sleep,” he says, and then, turning to Joshua: “You gotta lay down, too.”

Jeonghan wants to ask why, just as Joshua complies. Jeonghan doesn’t look at him, staring at the ceiling as his heartbeat picks up. He feels the mattress deep, feels the proximity of Joshua next to him, his warmth, his smell.

“Now you guys hold hands.”

“Are you fucking with us?” Jeonghan finally asks, lifting his head to look at Minghao. The idiot is smiling, holding another censer in his hands to place near Joshua.

“I’m not. I mean, you don’t have to, but it will help, since we’re trying to get information on him, through you.”

Jeonghan is about to protest when warm fingers take hold of his, effectively shutting him up. He lays back down, then, staring at the ceiling, wishing his galloping heart to slow.

“Now you ask your shadows whatever it is you ask them.” Minghao continues. “And Joshua, just, think of something nice.”

“What will you be doing?” Jeonghan asks, sounding slightly petulant.

“Me? I’m putting you guys to sleep,” Minghao says, placing an armful of chamomile and valerian at their feet. “Now we start.”

Jeonghan closes his eyes, and he knows he doesn’t need to talk to be heard anymore. The shadows are inside him, now, clinging to his being like a second skin. They know what it is that he wants, and they give it to him. He barely has time to hear Minghao’s chant, doesn’t feel him flitting around them, strange gestures and stranger words. He sinks like a stone in a pond.

_He opens his eyes and the world is dark. There’s the sound of thunder in the distance, and colors start to bleed in. Black, white, and then purple, the purple of the sky before a storm. There’s shadows above him and soon they resolve themselves into a tall, twisting tree he knows well for it took everything he had. He’s lying in a grave, he realizes, a grave of earth and bones and when he tries to lift his hands they refuse to move. He is dead, he now understands, dead and yet living and he hears a scrapping next to him, voices sharing words he clings to before they disappear in the haze of his mind._

“Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell; and in the lowest deep a lower deep, still threatening to devour me, opens wide”

“To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.”

_And he knows this voice, has heard it before; he craves it, he does, his whole being straining to hear. There’s soft touches on his face and he loves these fingers, he does, they trail down his neck, upon his torso where his shroud rests and they grip it, lifting it over his head and he knows then it is the end. And then, then there’s a kiss, soft and barely there, and if his heart could beat it would spear itself upon his ribs._

“Goodbye, Shua.” _The adored voice says. And then, everything turns to black._

 _White and grey. He’s standing in a chapel and he recognizes it immediately. Under the stained-glass window, now unbroken, there’s a statue pointing an arrow at him with its skeletal hand._ I sleep in dust and filth, _and when he looks down there’s two women, kneeling at the edges of a stone trough. In the trough lays a body, head resting on a stone pillow. There’s a slash at its throat from where blood has ceased flowing long ago, and its mouth is gaping open, sunken eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. The women touch it tenderly, using white strips of cloth to wash its limbs, its torso where dried blood cling. The trough is filled with water, the corpse’s hair moving like seaweeds. He stares, stares at his own face, frozen in death._

_The women are singing, something soft and sad in words he doesn’t understand. He takes a step towards them, and falls through the floor._

_Green and brown and he’s standing outside, following the two women who walk behind the gravedigger’s cart. The corpse lays in it, sewn in a white shroud, and they cross the churchyard to the common grave opened underneath the ossuary. The women don’t seem to care about the smell, about the carcasses rotting there, about the black flies. They remain as the gravedigger lowers the corpse into the earth, covering it with a layer of soil. They remain as he leaves, the cart clacketing away. They remain as the day wanes, holding each other, silent and solemn._

_The women are old, now, and still they remain, jutting bones and grey hair. Soon there’s only one, until she, too, decays into dust. Only remains the rain and the wind and the sun drying the earth. Hundreds of years and the churchyard too crumbles, abandoned ruins where crows nest._

_That’s it. There is only darkness, now. Darkness and unfathomable loneliness._

He wakes crying. This sadness is someone else’s, he knows, yet it lodges there in his bones, in the spaces between his ribs, its weight crushing his beating heart. There’s arms around him, a familiar smell and the voice of someone he loves yet it won’t stop, and he clings, burying his face against warm skin.

“You promised, no burial this time, but I only saw death.”

“I know,” Joshua says, stroking his back, his hair. “I know, I’m sorry.”

“You’re so sad,” Jeonghan continues, “You’re so sad and lonely.”

Joshua gently lifts Jeonghan’s head from him then, cradling his face in his hands.

“Not anymore. It wasn’t all so terrible, was it?”

And Jeonghan remembers, the tender gestures of the women, washing the corpse of a friend, of a son, the silent, serene walk to the grave. He remembers the soft soil placed over him, remembers the sun and the wind in the leaves. He remembers, too, soft touches and a softer kiss.

 _You’re right,_ he wants to say. _It wasn’t so terrible. There were people who loved you. There was me. I came for you, and I love you, too._ But his voice is lost somewhere in his throat and he can only stare, stare at Joshua’s dark eyes, at the bow of his mouth and he wants to kiss him again, he does, but it is not the time nor the place. Or maybe it is, Joshua bringing his face closer, thumbs stroking his cheeks, and he smells like the lavender still burning, and he tastes like longing, lips soft and caressing.

“Please don’t do that,” Minghao’s voice raises, and they part with a jolt, Jeonghan cringing at him. Minghao’s seated at the foot of the bed, slightly disheveled, and he’s holding a single bloom of heather in his hands.

“Are you alright?” Joshua asks.

“I am perfectly fine,” Minghao dismisses him with a wave of his hand, still not getting up from the floor. “Who were these women?”

Jeonghan sits up, all embarrassment forgotten.

“You saw it too?”

“It’s not that hard for me to tap into your energy. Seeing what you see is exhausting, but not unfeasible.”

“Sometimes I forget you’re not just a charlatan.”

Minghao throws a peace sign with both hands, the heather bloom falling into his lap. He turns to Joshua next, repeating his question.

“One of them was my mother.”

“Your mother?” Jeonghan and Minghao both ask in unison, Joshua regarding them with amusement.

“Why do you sound surprised that I have a mother?”

“It just doesn’t fit the whole tragic wizard dead for centuries vibe you got going on,” Minghao says, waving a hand in Joshua’s general direction.

“What is a vibe?”

“It’s – oh goddamnit. Not the subject right now. We need to focus.”

Joshua turns to Jeonghan, mouthing, “ _a vibe?”,_ but Jeonghan just shrugs, looking back at Minghao.

“Don’t you have anything in your archives that could tell us who the second woman was?”

“She seemed familiar,” Joshua adds. “But I forgot a lot of things. A lot of people.”

“Maybe I do,” Minghao says. “I’m gonna look.”

But he stays suspiciously seated on the floor, and Jeonghan creeps to the edge of the bed to look down at him. 

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Look, all this waving my arms around chanting so that you wouldn’t get stuck in somebody else’s dreams while also streaming them directly into my own consciousness was very tiring okay.”

Jeonghan sighs, patting Minghao’s head like a long-suffering parent.

“It’s alright buddy. We’re gonna let you rest.”

“If my arms hadn’t gone numb I’d deck you.”

Jeonghan laughs, getting off the bed and stretching. Strangely he doesn’t feel tired, as if Minghao had taken all his exhaustion as well as his dreams. Joshua follows him outside the room, Jeonghan taking every precaution not to look at him. It doesn’t help, he’s too aware of him anyway, of the sound of his footsteps, of his presence right behind, and the feel of Joshua’s lips against his is still there, Jeonghan’s heart beating too fast against his ribs. The silence stretches as they go down the corridor, Jeonghan’s hands turning clammy. It’s too awkward, and when he abruptly turns back to say something, anything, Joshua almost bumps into him.

“Ah, sorry.”

“No no it’s fine, it’s my bad,” Jeonghan flounders, standing too close, way too close.

Joshua has a tiny smile and Jeonghan can only stare, stare at his eyes and his mouth and when Joshua stares back he shivers, something pulling at his whole being. And before he can open his mouth to speak, Joshua crashes into him. His mouth is hot against his own, hungry, and Jeonghan pulls him closer still, fisting a hand in his hair, pulling at his shirt as Joshua crowds him against the nearest wall, kissing his mouth, his jaw, the soft skin of his neck. There’s an embarrassing moan escaping Jeonghan’s throat, a choked sound Joshua’s swallows, tongue teasing and Jeonghan flounders, grabbing at Joshua’s shoulders, and he kisses back, equally as urgent, equally as hungry. _I love you_ , Jeonghan will say one day. _I love you and I missed you when I didn’t even know who you were._

**6.**

They fall into another spell of lazy days, waiting, learning each other, each thought and each curve and each laughter. It is strange, Jeonghan thinks. It shouldn’t be this easy. But maybe they had suffered enough, and he lets go, letting himself sink in Joshua’s presence, in the shadows trailing his steps, in the dreams he dreams.

All this is interrupted by hurried footsteps, and the library’s door banging open under Minghao’s kick. He holds a precariously balanced pile of documents in his arms, and both Jeonghan and Joshua watches with interest as he blunders towards them, letting the pile fall onto the couch where they lounge, Jeonghan’s head pillowed in Joshua’s lap.

“What is all this,” the later asks, staring dubiously at the mess of books and letters.

“I found some shit.”

“Only some?”

“Okay shut up,” Minghao barrels on, half out of breath. “I know who the woman is. She wrote about the whole thing, they sent letters back and forth. They were friends. Your mum and her, I mean.”

“And who is she?”

“My ancestor. Jeonghan, remember the letter you read once? It was her, it’s the same woman. She helped with the burial. With both burials.”

“Both?” Joshua perks up, interest piqued.

“Your brother. They didn’t let him rot on the spot you know,” Minghao says, grabbing a folded document from the top of the pile to hand it to Joshua. Jeonghan sits up, watching over Joshua’s shoulder as he carefully unfolds it, uncovering the neat writing on the page.

_Dearest,_

_You and I already know the perfect place. A hill where poppies bloom, for him to rest. There’s the willow tree that will watch over his grave, and in the cold months snowdrops will grow there. I know there will be no end to your grief, I know that your faith has forsaken you. But there is small comforts to be found, in the love of your friends, in what you can still do, for him. For them. All that live must die, and it falls to us the living to tend to our dead. Let us bury them. I will accompany you. I will do everything you cannot bear to._

_I am here waiting for your answer,_

_Your friend always,_

_Xu Qiaolian_

Sometime during the reading Joshua had grabbed Jeonghan’s hand, threading his fingers into his as if to ground himself, his body leaning into Jeonghan’s side, seeking warmth, seeking comfort.

“Do you know where this place is?” Minghao asks, seemingly oblivious to Joshua’s turmoil, who answers him with a question.

“Do you have my mother’s answer?”

“Sadly no,” Minghao shakes his head. “But I have something else, that she sent later on.”

He rummages through his pile, disregarding the book that tumbles to the floor, finally extirpating another letter he hands to Joshua. There’s an intake of breath when he opens it on the painfully familiar writing, and his fingers tightens around Jeonghan’s own as he reads on.

_Dear,_

_I feel my days starting to brighten, and I hope it does not mean that my heart has steeled. You were right, after all, there is comfort to be found even in dark times such as those. I think often of that day upon the hill, and I am overcome by such a soft kind of sadness that I wonder if it is sadness at all. My grief is a constant companion, but one that I do not hate. It is the traces of the ones I loved, remains that I will forever keep with me, and I cherish it just as I cherished them. There is no anger left in me._

_I thank you, for all that you did. I sometimes wish our coven would have remained, but there are things you cannot overcome, and I find that solitude suits me. You need not fear for me, my friend. If I did not forget, I did forgive. There is still good things in this world; you are one of them. Please keep writing me, this correspondence is one of the few things I joyfully look forward to._

_Love,_

_Your friend always._

Joshua stares at the short letter for twice as long as it took him to read it, while the others stay silent, allowing him time, Jeonghan gently stroking the warm skin of his held hand. 

“She said she forgave me. She was alright, in the end.”

“I don’t think you were the only one she had to forgive,” Minghao says, righting the glasses on his nose. “You may have killed your brother, but you were taken from her, too.”

Joshua nods slowly, looking back at the letter. Jeonghan glances at Minghao, at the room around them and there’s shadows in the corners, bleeding into the light; if Jeonghan focuses enough he can hear their soft whispers, smell their smell, rain and earth and something old. It’s strangely comforting, he thinks, calling them forth and the light dims in the room, a soft chant rising. They’re warm, Jeonghan realizes for the first time, warm and gentle, pooling around them like a cloak, a dark embrace to shield them.

“I know where it is,” Joshua says then, voice almost a whisper. His eyes still don’t leave the letter in his hands and the other share a glance, Jeonghan leaning further against him in a show of support.

“I want to go,” Joshua continues. “And I want you to come with me,” he adds, turning to Jeonghan, who nods. They fall quiet, after that, a companionable silence where Joshua shifts through the records Minghao brought, reading passages the man points to him, face solemn, eager eyes devouring the yellowed pages. Against him Jeonghan falls half asleep, and he dreams, soft dreams of rain and forests, of purple sky and summer storms. The shadows whispers in his ears and in his dreams he understands them; they speak of centuries past, of loss and love, of death and what comes after; of the tree and the bones below, of who came there before him, and they’re not as alone as it seems.

When Jeonghan wakes, night has fallen outside the window and his head is pillowed in Joshua’s lap, lazy fingers combing through his hair. The pile of records has disappeared along with Minghao and Joshua is leafing through a thin volume he holds in one hand. He looks serene, lines of worry erased from his face. He’s beautiful, like this, and Jeonghan stares through his eyelashes, immobile so as not to betray his awaking, stealing this moment for himself.

Joshua turns a page and Jeonghan stirs, finally, drawing to himself Joshua’s gaze and the soft smile of his lips.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Yes. Can we stay like this for a bit?”

“Sure,” Joshua says, and the hand in Jeonghan’s hair falls to his jaw, cupping his cheek; dips to his throat and the pulse that beats there, finds its way to his chest, right over his heart where it stays. Jeonghan closes his eyes, a soft sigh escaping his lips.

“Will you read to me?” he asks, voice quiet.

“If you want,” Joshua says, clearing his throat. _“You need not fear to leave me lest I should be alone, for I often part with things I fancy I have loved, – sometimes to the grave, and sometimes to an oblivion rather bitterer than death – thus my heart bleeds so frequently that I shant mind the hemorrhage, and I only add an agony to several previous ones, and at the end of day remark – a bubble burst! Such incidents would grieve me when I was but a child, and perhaps I could have wept when little feet hard by mine, stood still in the coffin, but eyes grow dry sometimes, and hearts get crisp and cinder, and had as lief burn.”_

“I won’t leave you,” Jeonghan interrupts without thinking.

“What?”

“I won’t leave you alone.”

“I know,” Joshua says, and he puts the book face down on the cushion next to him, bending until his lips cover Jeonghan’s own. He kisses like he reads, Jeonghan thinks, soft and careful. Jeonghan brings his hands to Joshua’s hair, kissing him deeper, and when they part Joshua’s smiling, something wistful and longing.

“My heart never cindered,” he says, and Jeonghan has to strain to hear him. “I always minded the hemorrhage, always minded the little feet, hard by mine in the coffin. And yet I did something so terrible it took an old god to punish me.”

Jeonghan grips the hand still remaining over his beating heart, threading his fingers into Joshua’s own.

“Yet you were forgiven. You should forgive yourself, now, too.”

“How can I?” Joshua asks, and there’s a quiet desperation in his voice, a sadness that Jeonghan knows well; it was his too, once, when he sat in a dream under a purple sky.

“I love you,” he says instead of an answer. Joshua’s eyes widen slightly, and he remains quiet, hand stilling in Jeonghan’s hair. Silence stretches between them, Jeonghan’s stomach sinking with each passing second.

“Joshua?” he asks, voice quiet and unsure. Joshua blinks as if awakened from a dream, and suddenly Jeonghan is smothered in a tight hug, Joshua bending awkwardly above him and Jeonghan laughs, a sound soon swallowed by Joshua’s lips on his, kissing him again and again.

“What are you doing?” Jeonghan laughs, half-heartedly fending off Joshua’s ministration.

“I am enjoying my new life,” Joshua says, cradling Jeonghan’s face in his hand, gazing down at him before kissing him, deep and adoring.

**7.**

They leave at night. Joshua refuses to even get near Minghao’s banged-up car so they leave on foot; it’s not so far, after all. Minghao had never left the place of his birth, the place where the magic was the strongest, the place where all had happened. He watches them leave from the threshold of the shop, waving like a fool and if it somewhat diminishes the solemnity of the situation, no one really minds.

Joshua walks in front, holding a brass of white tulips Minghao gave him. _It’s for forgiveness,_ he’d said. _Forgiveness and remembrance._ Jeonghan follows, carrying the single bloom of a star of Bethlehem. Atonement. Reconciliation, one Joshua could never obtain during his lifetime. They walk and the night is quiet, quiet and warm, a soft wind blowing in the leaves overhead. It had rained during the day, a short summer rain and the earth underfoot stayed humid and soft. They remain quiet, Joshua lost in thoughts.

When they reach the foot of the hill Joshua stops, moving the flowers under one arm and extending his hand for Jeonghan to grab. It’s a clear night, the moon overhead sharing enough light for them to forgo using the torches they brought. They climb, stepping carefully on the overgrown path. Brambles snag on their clothes and Jeonghan worries about the state of the tomb, when they’ll find it. He doesn’t have to. It’s there, at the top of the hill, sheltered under a weeping willow and there must be some kind of magic here, keeping the place untouched by time and decay.

Joshua stills a few steps from the grave and Jeonghan stands at his side, hand in hand, waiting.

“Let’s go,” Joshua says, the first words he shares; his voice sounds quiet, subdued, and his grip tightens on Jeonghan’s hand as he takes a step.

He kneels before the simple stone marking the grave, flowers blooming around it, their crown of petals bending towards the earth as if they mourned the body laying underneath. Only bones and dust must remain, now, and Joshua gathers his white flowers over the stone, extending a hand to Jeonghan for the bloom of Bethlehem. He keeps it in his hands, silent and prostrated, and only by the shake of his shoulders does Jeonghan know that he is crying.

They remain so for a long time, until spots of orange start to dot the horizon, and Joshua finally lays the bloom over the nest of tulips.

“I am sorry,” he says, simple words that will never encompass the depths of his remorse. But it is felt, and Jeonghan kneels beside him, taking his hand in his, letting him lean against his side. A gentle wind rises, tangling their hair, kissing their cheeks, and if Jeonghan tries he can hear the whispers of the shadows, their soft song; it speaks of longing and loneliness, of remorse and regret, of loss, forgiveness and love.

Joshua leans his head against his shoulder, and Jeonghan turns to accommodate him, arms rising to circle his back as Joshua buries his face against his neck.

“Thank you,” he says, voice muffled against Jeonghan’s skin. “Thank you for all that you did. I love you, too.”

Jeonghan only nods, holding him tighter, and they remain there, watching the sun rise over the hills, painting the landscape in pinks and yellows. Jeonghan’s gaze falls to the lonely tombstone, covered in white flowers, caressed by the grass and the wind. And he wonders, about the man sleeping underneath, words he had read long ago coming back to his mind.

_You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that, oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell._

There’s peace in death, Jeonghan knows, anguish left to the living, laid out at the foot of tombstones in the form of white flowers. Joshua shifts against him, sitting more comfortably, hand resting over Jeonghan’s own and he feels warm, Jeonghan gazing down at him with adoring eyes. He had wanted something to happen, he remembers, listless days filled with an ennui he couldn’t bear to live anymore, finding shelter in dreams, next to specters and shadows amongst which he’d felt at home.

And then, the tower had crumbled, so completely he’d had to shift through the rubbles, building his world back up piece by piece until it led him there, under a willow upon a hill, watching the sun rise, setting alight a world he did not hate anymore.

“Joshua?”

“Mh?”

“What will happen, now?”

“I’m not sure,” Joshua says, not moving from his place against him. “But whatever does, I think my days are starting to brighten, too, and I am ready to live with my grief.”

Jeonghan nods, letting his gaze wander over the hills, over the blooming flowers, over the empty sky. They stay there, sitting by the grave until the sun is high up in the sky, until the day warms, the night receding completely. They bow as they leave, finding their way back towards Minghao’s little store, tucked away in a quiet street. Towards the library and its old, sunken couch. Towards the bright kitchen and the kettle always boiling, towards the shop and its counter where Jeonghan leans, watching over the useless clutter they sell. Towards the little room he loves, tucked at the top of the stairs. Towards home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The hard little feet quote is from a letter by Emily Dickinson and the last one if from "The big sleep" by Raymond Chandler. The statue is an actual statue I saw in a castle in Dijon, quote included (except the arms were broken off but those statues usually held arrows so yeah)
> 
> Anyway thank you so much for reading I can't believe I finally managed to finish something. I hope you liked it!!  
> I actually have two other stories set in this universe (but with monsta x): [There are windchimes and the smell of lemon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16505243) and [Light breaks where no sun shines](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16728630).
> 
> Also you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/BlanquetteAO3) if you wish! Take care of yourselves and thank you again.


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